


What He Left Behind

by meanwhileflor



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-06-02
Updated: 2014-01-30
Packaged: 2017-12-13 19:12:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 22,628
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/827844
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meanwhileflor/pseuds/meanwhileflor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Twelve years ago, after a sordid affair, Jaime left Brienne for Cersei and told the Tarth girl never to contact him again. When Brienne found out she was pregnant, the danger of Cersei finding out drove her away to Bourton-on-the-Water. Now, her twins drive her back to London to confront the man who, once upon a time, had shattered their dreams of a family, leaving her behind.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Drumming Song

**Author's Note:**

> First JaimexBrienne fic ever! I'm from Argentina, a Spanish native speaker, so be kind, please. Anyway, if there are any mistakes, do point them out and I'll do my best to correct them in the following chapters. I wanted to try something a bit different. It's a twisted story. The first chapter is merely an intriduction. I aim to dig into their past and project toward their future.  
> Why Bourton-on-the-Water? Well, I saw pictures of the place and it sent Brienne vibes. Hope you can see it too and, more than anything, I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it! :)

DRUMMING SONG

 

Saturday morning came and with it, the hot sunlight that filtered through the tall window in her bedroom. The rays poured down on her, caressing her skin through her oversized shirt, down her legs – warm, warm, so very warm. Brienne didn't even stir, immersed in dreams of a golden man with dark thoughts and darker feelings. It was almost noon and she'd vowed to wake up early, just as she always did – right after dawn. She had always been one to keep her vows, but the exhaustion on her body pulled her into a deeper slumber, fighting voraciously against all arguments her consciousness would feebly present.

Suddenly, she felt a tickling on her sides – the warmth extending beyond her skin, deeper and deeper into her soul – seizing, drowning, overpowering the very protests of her limbs as she reached out and pinned two bodies down, pushing them farther into the mattress until they erupted into a fit of giggles. She allowed a content smile to seep through her visage right before opening her eyes. Her arms relaxed above them and two heads of shiny, soft, golden hair peeked out with curious, impish eyes. 

“G'morning, midgets,” she greeted them and they crawled up to kiss each of her cheeks. “What trouble are you up to now?”

Cadogan hid his head under her chin, his breath hot and sweet on her neck. Tehila, on the other hand, stood clumsily on the bed and, after balancing herself over her mother's form, threw a leg across her stomach and settled atop Brienne, gently straddling her.

Cade had her bashfulness, her blushing cheeks, her hesitant smile; but Hillie – Hillie was her father's daughter, Jaime, all Jaime.

“My birthday is coming,” Hillie said, looking Brienne straight in the eye.

“Mine too!” Cade timidly echoed and pressed his childish fingers against his mother's shoulder blade.

“Well, duh! Not the brightest crayon in the box, are you?” Hillie tilted her head as she contemplated her twin. “Your brilliance is truly outstanding, Cade. So much so that I claim the right to deny any parentage that may associate us, from this moment on, as permitted by law.”

Brienne turned her head and muffled a sharp bark of laughter against her pillow. “Your brother is smart, Tehila,” she heard herself say - the subdued veneer of her voice doing nothing to placate her daughter's innocent mordancy. 

“Yes, yes. He has emotional intelligence, as aunt Mag says.” Hillie turned dismayed eyes at him and drew a hand to the expanse of skin over her heart, affecting her voice with mock concern. “You know that emotional intelligence is just a way to qualify the Hufflepuffs of the world, right?”

“Tehila!” Brienne called out.

“I'm not dumb,” Cadogan whispered as his fingers climbed up her neck and settled on her jaw. He turned Brienne's head to him and drew his lips to her ear. “I'm not dumb. Right, mum?”

Before Brienne could utter the answer vehemently toying with her tongue, Hillie dismounted her and tickled the boy's stomach until his eyes were coated in tears of mirth. “You're not dumb,” she told him, “but you have mother's heart. You can't give away your candy to every kid that looks like he wants one. What will happen when mother dies? You'll squander your inheritance and I'll have to offer you a place under my roof. I don't plan on living with you any more than is strictly necessary, Cade.”

Brienne was going to scold Cade for sharing his candy. Every week, she'd meet an angry parent complaining about her son and giving her a lesson on the way to administer sugar treats within a kid's diet. “Is aunt Mag still trying to turn you into a barrister?” Brienne asked instead.

“Yes!” Cadogan clapped excitedly. “And aunt Sansa says I have the soul of an artist. The next Rachmaninov, she calls me. Says my songs will turn into the soundtrack of epic love stories featured in the greatest films of all times.” He closed his eyes and smiled, and Brienne couldn't help but smile right back at him as she shuffled his hair affectionately. All of a sudden, Cade opened his eyes and the joy previously present on his face drained out of it. “You're not going to die, are you?”

“I don't plan to...” Brienne answered and her eyes twinkled with delight. “I have to see those movies after all.”

Cadogan pursed his lips and looked at Tehila for some sort of confirmation, though Brienne couldn't quite decipher what was it he seeked aproval for. They were smart, her children, and sly, too – much like their father had been. She found her cheeks pulled taut by the oncoming grin, the veil over their silent conversation lifting off to hit her with a coy realization. 

“Your birthday,” she said amused, “is approaching.” The twins turned to look at her, their eyes widened in surprise and something more – hopeful anticipation, she guessed. “And you broke into my lair with an express demand at the tip of your devious little tongues, didn't you?”

Tehila nodded her head once, twice – all impetuousness and poise. Cadogan looked torn between crawling out of bed and backing up his sister. A moment of hesitation, his eyes flickering between the two females, and he took his side, clutching his sister hand and squeezing once, twice – all loyalty and honour.

“We're ready to meet dad,” Cade said. Brienne didn't know whether it was his implicit request or the fact that he had voiced it first that surprised her, but surprise her it did.

“We're going to turn twelve and I know you said it wasn't safe, we trust you when you say it, but we want to meet him, mum. And maybe... he wants to meet us too,” Hillie hastened to add. There was such a conviction in their voices, such a sweet innocence, a bitter longing. Brienne kissed their heads and enveloped them in a hug, drawing them to her, trying to melt them together - to go back, back, back. 

We all have a song, Brienne. Life may play it for us, but we draw the notes on the music sheet. You will write the introduction to Cadogan and Tehila's songs. One day, though, their fingers will itch to write their own music and you'll have to let them, she heard her father say in her head.

Maybe the time had come.

 

 

 

She knocked on the door. Behind her, Cade and Hillie swung at each other with twigs and yelled, and grunted, and laughed, but she couldn't hear them above the buzzing in her ears. The bags dangling from her hands had turned to lead, her mouth dried and her throat clogged up. She felt something pressing against her chest – fear, hot and violent. 

“Come inside, kids!” she heard Margaery say. Brienne couldn't see her. She couldn't feel her children brushing against her legs as they pushed past her and Mag, and ran by Sansa – Sansa, who was standing in the hall, arms crossed against her chest and brow creased with concern. “Bourton-on-the-Water, what a godforsaken place! Yet, how dreadful must London sound to you right now.”

The redhead took a step forward and elbowed Margaery with newfound vigour. “You're going to be fine, Brie.” One of her slender, elegant hands reached her shoulder and drove the buzzing out. Margaery's eyes did the rest. “We're going to take care of them,” Sansa felt the need to add.

“She knows that,” Mag emphasized with a reassuring smile. “And she knows we'll protect them until our hair turns grey and falls out of our heads. You're not alone, Brienne.”

A loaded silence followed their exchange. Brienne nodded her head and hoped her eyes conveyed all the gratitude she felt. She hugged her friends and kissed her chidlren on their foreheads, and just as she was about to reach her car, Sansa, sweet Sansa, proper Sansa, spoke one last time.

“It's about damn time that Lannister learns what he left behind,” she mused aloud.


	2. Called Out In The Dark

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's the second chapter. Thank you for all the reads and reviews! You truly inspired me.  
> I have to warn you that this will probably come as one hell of a shock, though. Hope you like surprises...

CALLED OUT IN THE DARK

 

Her life had been quite uneventful the past ten years, yet, upon setting foot in London, Brienne couldn't shake off the feeling that she had undergone far more changes than the city itself. Her journey reached an end at Victoria Coach Station. She got off there and, after slinging her duffel bag over one shoulder, went out into the crisp Autumn air, so different from the one that filled her lungs back at home. 

She paused on the sidewalk outside the station and stretched her legs as she considered what to do next. The ride to the metropolis had provided her with enough time to plan a course of action, but her thoughts had persistently turned to people, to faces and reactions. She had pictured Jaime after discovering the truth – a hundred different outcomes, one more distressing than the previous one. Cersei and Tyrion had already crossed her mind, unequal degrees of uneasinnes awoken by each of them. 

Brienne rid herself of those images with a forceful shake of her head. That was not the time. She had to be practical. Who was there for her? Podrick, she thought, but dismissed the name as easily as it came. The young boy, probably a young man by then, would assisst her, no doubt; but he'd also fret over her problems. She had enough concerns as it was and refused to add insult to injury by dragging Pod into the turmoil of her life. She needed someone flippant and careless, someone a bit callous. A name crossed her mind and she couldn't repress the chuckle that escaped her lips. Her hand immediately went to the back pocket of her jeans. 

Brienne retrieved her mobile and dialed his number. One ring, two rings, and- “Well, well... didn't my day just get promising?” The voice on the other end of the line was playful, mocking perhaps. “Let me guess, you went over your bucket list and realised you had yet to experience the wild adventure of a night in my bed, between my sheets... under my body.” 

“Hyle Hunt, did anyone ever tell you your name sounds like the alias of some ridiculuous cartoon?”

“Women tend to be too busy between my legs to wonder about my name,” he replied and she laughed at that - a rich, melodious sound. “Can I be of any service to you, my lady?” 

“I'm here,” Brienne replied. He didn't say anything, but she could hear his steps quickening, then halting, the sound of the door opening and closing and Hyle's light breathing on the other side. 

“You're not, I just checked. Don't play with fire, Brienne, or my heart may combust.”

“Here, in London.” Sometimes Hyle behaved like a child – an oversized child with a penchant for double-entendres and uncouth quips. “I'm at Victoria Station, Hyle. I need a place to spend the night. I was wondering if-”

“You realise I could make a hundred jests right now, don't you?” A beat. “You saved my life, Brienne. There's hardly anything you can ask for that I wouldn't give to you. And as a courtesy, I'll leave the implications of my last statement up to you.” 

“How gallant,” Brienne deadpanned. 

 

 

True to his word, Hyle had picked her up and even helped her with her bag, purposefully ignoring Brienne's protests. He drove them to his apartment and relinquished his bed in a rare display of chivalry. Brienne had felt too tired to protest then. “Don't worry,” he had said, “I knew you wouldn't be able to resist. The smell of me is intoxicating, so women claim.”

She showered, changed her attire and came out of the bedroom to find Hyle lying on the black leather sofa, an arm flexed over his forehead. He looked at her and whistled. 

“I'm going out.”

“I gathered,” he said knowingly and returned his gaze to a spot on the ceiling where the paint was starting to peel off. He opened his mouth to say something more, but she cut him off. 

“I'll be back before midnight.”

“A true Cinderella story, if I ever heard one.” Brienne grabbed the spare keys he had offered and walked up to him, kneeling near his head.

“You have bad breath,” she told him.

“You have a bad face,” he mocked. And those were the last words Brienne heard before she hailed a taxi outside his building.

The vehicle navigated the streets with familiar ease. A song was playing on the radio – Hindi, she guessed. As the taxi drove on, the city began to blur and the music began to fade. Her heart was hammering away in her chest, counting the blocks left, containing twelve years of uncertainties born anew. She wasn't scared of the man, she was terrified of what he knew and what he didn't. The idea of failing the twins, her children – so innocent and sweet –, paralyzed her. The driver yelled something unintelligible at her and Brienne broke out of her stupor long enough to realise the vehicle had reached its destination. The man at the wheel repeated himself, his words coated in a heavy accent she couldn't quite make out, and Brienne had to look over his shoulder at the taximeter to pay what he demanded. 

Once before his door, she closed her eyes, raised her fist and knocked. For a moment, everything came to a halt. A sudden heaviness washed over her, a sort of determination she had only experienced before – before Bourton-on-the-Water, before Cadogan and Tehila. It was the resolution of someone who only wants to prove herself, as she had done in the police academy. It was the will of a mother, of a lover and a woman. Jaime had left them behind, but Brienne would have been a fool were she to deny she hadn't left anything behind as well. 

She had left parts of herself discarded, neglected, forgotten. And as she stood there in the frigid cold of one October evening, she found a streak of that determination in her yet. 

The door opened with a brisk jerk and Brienne took a step back to regard the man before her. He was holding a glass of whiskey to his lips with one hand and carrying a book in the other, a finger bookmarking the place where his reading had been interrupted. 

“Night has yet to fall on us all. I can't be this drunk,” he said and reached out to touch her. His fingers grazed her hip and his jaw went slack. “Hell freeze over!”

“Hello, Tyrion.”

“I thought you were a ghost! My own Ghost of Chistmas Past,” he ruminated. “Always suspected Scrooge was dipso.” He paused, took a gulp of whisky and looked at her once more. “You sure you're not a ghost?” Brienne shook her head. “Very well. Come in, then.”

Tyrion threw his book on the wooden chair at the entrance and disappeared for an instant. When he joined her, the much shorter man was holding a beer can. He wriggled his eyebrows and smiled. “I remember you to be a beer girl.”

“And I'm afraid beer isn't going to cut it tonight,” she retorted. His expression remained unfazed as he opened the can and poured it in his glass.

“Boilermaker?” Tyrion asked as he extended the drink to her. She offered a curt nod, retrieved it and followed him into the study he had been previously occupying, judging by the fire burning in the grate. The little man climbed onto an armchair and signalled for her to take the other, which, after some fidgeting, Brienne did. “You're not here to catch up,” he said and it was neither a question nor a critical statement, but a mere assessment – unprejudiced and sincere. 

Brienne sipped her drink as she considered the best way to go about the situation. After a prolonged pause, filled with Tyrion's silent curiosity, she put the glass down on the coffee table between them and raised her eyes to look into his mismatched ones. 

“Twelve years ago, Jaime and I came back from an undercover operation in Dublin,” she began and a flick of his wrist encouraged her to carry on. “We went there on a search mission of sorts.”

“Yes, yes. I recall. You were in Ireland for almost a year, trying to retrive my wife and restore her to her humble abode. I was suspected of murder back then, couldn't leave the country; but I remember, acutely so. You were assigned to the case. A pretty, discontent housewife kidnapped and made to work in a brothel. We, the Lannisters, have always been a source of hatred – whether warranted or not. That time it was the Baelish bastard, with all his delusions of grandeur, who took it upon himself to make us pay. He shipped her to the island and thrust her into prostitution. Poetic justice, he said. I had screwed a procession of women and my chaste, lovely wife had been justly screwed by a procession of men.” Tyrion uncorked a bottle of wine and took a swig straight from it. “As you were saying, Jaime and you were back. Ireland had changed you both if I'm not mistaken. All that sexual tension reached its climax there and you engaged in – a relationship, perhaps?”

“That's something I'd rather not label,” she said and he smirked. “Soon Cersei found out, though.” Briene retrieved her glass and downed the rest of her drink. It burnt her throat and moistened her eyes, but she found it oddly comforting. “This is something I never told Jaime.” Tyrion leaned forward and clasped his hands together. “Your father had been murdered by Petyr and his spot as head of the Police Department was reassigned. Cersei was having an affair with the man appointed.”

Tyrion snorted, leaned back and took another swig. “Him and half the Met,” he said, regarding her with rapt attention. “Everybody knew it – everybody, except Jaime.”

“Probably,” she granted. “One day, Cersei paid me a visit. I was looking for the keys to my apartment when the door was thrust back. She didn't attempt any physical threat – knew that, if it came to it, I would have her pinned down to the floor in a matter of seconds. She did, however, threatened to have me removed from the Police Service if I refused to end what I had with her brother.”

“You left your job for Jaime?” Tyrion asked perplexed. 

“I knew what Cersei was capable of and I would have risked it if my situation had been any different. I didn't leave my job for Jaime, I did it for Cade and Tillie,” she corrected him. “I was pregnant, Tyrion. I was carrying your brother's children.”


	3. A Promise Of Summer

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok, don't hate me. Please, please, please. This chapter was necessary to clarify a few things which will make Jaime and Brienne's reunion that much sweeter. That was the bad news. Here are the good: Next chapter, the lion and the maiden will finally meet.  
> I was going to leave the encounter with Tyrion at chapter two, but felt there were things he had to say that Jaime may not be willing to share himself (at the beginning, at least) and that are crucial to see whether our fav couple really has a shot at this or not. Turns out they... well, you'll have to read! ;)  
> Thank you for all the encouragement. I don't want to let down all the people who take time to leave kind words here and that makes me write faster, so I guess this update is as much yours as it is mine. That been said, dig in!

A PROMISE OF SUMMER

 

A laden silence stretched out between them, stale and sour. Tyrion remained motionless, staring at the woman before him. For a moment, the only sounds in the room were those of the crackling fire, the ticking clock and their deep and heavy breathing.

He regarded Brienne through long, lowered lashes. Her lips were pressed together, neither too firmly nor too loosely. She held her head high, but not defiantly so. Her spine was erect against the back of her chair and her fingers ran impassively over the rim of her glass. There seemed to be no traces of that demure girl his brother had stolen blushes from. And then his eyes met hers. The rich blue there reflected a myriad of emotions – poignantly intense, breathtakingly sincere. Tyrion could have drowned in the loneliness he saw there. Such expressive eyes, he could almost taste all the bittersweet tears they must have spilled for all she had lost, for all she had thought she possessed, for all she knew could never truly be hers. Her walls had been demolished and her fortress, abandoned by the invading forces. She had held her dreams in her hands – tangible and promising – only to wake up later, scorned and dejected. And amid those tumbling seas of woe, he could distinguish the fine thread of hope that she seemed to be hanging onto, refusing to let go. She had managed to pull back, taking no prisoners as she conquered the ghosts of her past. Deep down, somewhere unnameable, Tyrion was jealous. 

“Cadogan and Tehila need to meet their father, they crave it. And I believe it's time for them to face facts, whatever those may be. I cannot shelter them anymore.”

“Did you say Tehila?” Of all the things he could have said, he found that falling into the pattern of witty remarks was the one he was most comfortable with. “Let me guess, the name came to you at a Mexican-themed party. Or... oh, Tarth! Was it a tribute to the funny, drunken uncle?”

“You hate tequila,” she retorted and her eyes shone with barely repressed amusement. “They know about you, too – bits and pieces, but they know you at your best. I tried to keep Tywin outside the plot, though.”

“Show me the pictures, woman, and do not lie to me. I know you carry them around,” Tyrion told her and, for the first time that night, he put the wine away. Brienne smiled at him and retrieved her purse. She rummaged through its contents and, with clumsy, timid movements, she managed to extricate the photos from the plastic insert in her wallet. She stacked the photos into a tidy pile and handed them over to Tyrion.

He took one peek at the first and gasped. The resemblance they bore to his own siblings was terrifying. Only two traits set them apart. They had Brienne's bright blue eyes, big and eloquent. And they had an air of easiness about them that had been lacking in either Cersei or Jaime, even at such a tender age. He reached a picture of Tehila sporting a wig of spaghetti, tomato sauce streaking down her puffy cheeks. “She looks-”

“Like Cersei,” Brienne filled in and Tyrion was startled by the softness of her utterance. He felt a wave of reverent awe come over him – awe at that queer, gentle woman who had to live with a remainder of the slights inflicted on her, awe at her who had managed to look on the wound without flinching in remembrance of the pain spread by its infliction. He remembered Jaime saying he didn't deserve her and Tyrion began to wonder whether anyone genuinely did, whether the world could contain so much compassion or whether the compassion was instilled in her by a world that wanted to remind people like him, like Jaime and Cersei, that beautiful melodies could be made out of life's discordant sounds. 

“I was going for ridiculous, but that too.” Tyrion reached out and placed the pile of pictures on the table between them. “What can I do for you, Brienne?” He may have been a sentimental fool then, but Tyrion felt overcome by the sudden desire to return some of her compassion. “What are you going to do?”

“I need to know whether it's safe to bring the twins into Jaime's life,” she told him candidly. “I'd rather die than have Cersei find out about them. And I need to know whether Jaime can keep a secret from her, whether he can be the father they deserve.”

“Bourton-on-the-Water is your home now, right?” Tyrion asked and Brienne was shocked by both the unexpectedness of his question and the fact that he knew. “I keep a constant, albeit spare, correspondence with my little wife. I imagined wherever she was, you might be too. You're one of the few people she feels safe with.” She nodded and he smiled warmly at her. “Do not fret, my friend! I'm far from a threat.”

“Why-”

“Did I ask?” Tyrion interrupted. “Because I'm afraid your concerns are something no one else but Jaime can put at ease. But then, if you told him, you'd find yourself defenseless. And if he isn't or can't be the man they need, or if he drags Cersei into this, your kids will be exposed too. Sounds risky, I know, but there is one card you can play to your advantage.”

“He doesn't know where we live,” she realised. 

“There is something else you ought to know,” he declared and his face softens before the revelation. “Jaime left her a couple of years ago. The stratagem may prove to be needless, after all.”

“I can't imagine Cersei giving up on him.”

“And you're most certainly right,” he acknowledged, “but she's kept her distance. My sister found another game to engage in. It's kept her... busy, you could say. She's aiming at a political position – has enough dicks to occupy herself with.” He reached the end of his diatribe and looked expectantly at her, but Brienne didn't budge. She knew he was attempting to arise her curiosity and she knew curiosity had already driven her to enough dark corners, so she refused to indulge in it. Moreover, she couldn't quite tell whether it was in her to be curious at all, whether she had a right to. “Jaime had to discover she wasn't the sweet sister he had pictured her to be,” Tyrion carried on, deflated by her lack of response. “And he did. Soon, a map of promiscuous paths drew itself before his very eyes and he saw her not for who she had been or who he wanted her to be, but for the person she had truly become. There was also the maiming, but that's something you should see yourself. Maybe, that will pique your interest.”

“I can't imagine Jaime living without Cersei,” she said this time. 

“Well, he learnt to and he survived,” Tyrion said and assumed a pensive mood. “She's far less indispensable than she likes to think. Perhaps, we all are. I learnt that it isn't necessity what brings people closer. No, it's the primitive desire to find happiness within ourselves through someone else.” He retrieved his bottle, took a heartfelt gulp and raised his eyes to her. “What would you say to lunch tomorrow? You, me and Jaime – just like old times.”

 

 

Later, that night, after Brienne had left, Tyrion hung up the phone and went to bed. “You may find happiness yet,” he found himself saying and wondered whether he meant Brienne, Jaime or himself. Tomorrow, he thought, tomorrow I shall see.


	4. The Line Between Past And Future

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, there! I'm sorry it took me so long. I wanted to update after finishing a PW for uni, but then I fell ill; so, yeah... definitely not my week.   
> This is not as good as I would like it to be, but we're getting closer to the place I wanted. Also, you get a flashback into Jaime and Brienne's relationship. Yay!  
> The quote I included here comes from Never Let Me Go, by Kazuo Ishiguro. It is introduced into their past, 12 years ago, but I want you to know that the book's publication year was, in fact, 2005.  
> And well, I guess that's all. Enjoy! I'll go back to bed and get some rest. Not-my-week! :(

THE LINE BETWEEN PAST AND FUTURE

 

Another foggy day, Jaime thought. London seemed intent on mirroring his inner state lately, or maybe he was projecting again. It could have also been the book Tyrion had lent him, The Waves. He had taken to reading after his maiming and had become quite voracious in his appetite for fantasy. A defense mechanism, Tyrion claimed. Jaime had slid through a wide spectrum of literary works and Tyrion had been cunningly practical, introducing him to his own inclinations little by little, until Dante came in and, then, Nietzsche, Cortázar and Victor Hugo – the list was endless with his younger brother, who had been queerly excited to bond over something other than their mutual dislike of Cersei and Tywin. Indeed, Jaime had read many authors, but Virginia Woolf was depressive and continuing the story would have probably ended with him slitting his wrists in the immaculate apartment he had just moved into. He decided to put the book down , instead, and get on his way to Pont Street. 

It had been late the night before when Tyrion called, uttering a peremptory invitation to lunch at his house in Knightsbridge. The way he had hinted at half truths and the obnoxious demeanour he always acquired when in possession of high-handed knowledge -demeanour which he had seemed to have no qualms in displaying that very night- had, indeed, piqued Jaime's interest. After shrugging his coat on, he stepped out into London's frigid air and headed down Cambridge Street. On his way to Pimlico station, Jaime passed by Classic Bindings, a bookstore a few blocks down the street, and caught sight of one particular book. The title made him halt mid-step, bringing unbind memories to his already haunted present. 

 

 

TWELVE YEARS BEFORE

Jaime rolled on the mattress and draped his arm over Brienne's stomach, letting it slide around her waist until his fingers reached the tender skin below her ribcage and lazily tickled her there. She remained unfazed, her attention wholly focused on the page before her, as she gathered his hand in hers and tucked it under Jaime's own pillow. 

“Haven't worn you out yet?” he asked. She grumbled something unintelligible and turned the page. “If you continue to ignore me, I'll have to set it straight.”

“If I continue to ignore you, I doubt you'll be able to,” she retorted. 

Jaime propped himself up on his elbow and looked at the clock on her bedside table. “Have you lost your mind? It's three in the morning, for crying out loud!”

“Why do you care, anyway? It's Sunday.You always sleep through Sunday mornings.”

“I don't sleep through them,” he moaned. “I stay in bed with you, paying zealous worship to your body. Some people attend church service. I, on the other hand, kneel before the goddess on my bed and whisper my prayers between her legs.” 

Jaime's hand disappeared under the covers and glided down her hipbone to trace luscious, suggestive circles on her thigh. “I like when you talk like that,” she told him and his hand inched higher, “with all those metaphors rolling off your tongue. You seem to be particularly fond of them. Maybe you'd like to listen to this. Here, I-”

“God,” he exhaled and rolled off her, rubbing his eyes vigorously. Brienne took the chance to thrust a leg between his and, drawing her lips closer to him, nipped at his earlobe.

“No, not god – goddess. And she demands that you listen to the liturgy,”she purred after her teeth released the skin. 

“Why does it feel as if I were sleeping with Tyrion?”

The words escaped him before he had any time to put some thought into them and it was once they had been uttered – left out in the open to lacerate with all the implications of his past transgressions – that he realised how fragile their relationship was. There had been confessions pronounced in the dead of night, followed by intimate touches that hinted at absolution. There had been the desperate dwelling of tongues, and lips, and teeth as he consumed her breath and let it chase his demons away. Jaime had gifted her with glimpses of himself stripped bare, simply because he'd known that, back then, those glimpses hadn't felt a privilege to her; so he'd ventured into those moments – recklessly, with no regards for her innocence, expecting nothing from them – only to find compassion, acceptance, nourishment – such sweet redemption. Those tribulations had brought them together and made them stronger. And yet, he still knew her to be so young and vulnerable. He often felt that a step in the wrong direction could send everything spiralling out of control, could shatter her, destroy what they had and leave him astray once more. 

He was a Lannister. He had been raised to wield power and crush the weak, but, right then – in bed with her, gentle fingers ghosting over his chest, so near his heart –, Jaime found that frailty to be inspiriting. What they received, what they would offer, was given willfully, reverently, out of selflessness and trust. They gambled with their hearts, he knew. But if he could lose his in one hand of fate, if that made him weak, then damn it all, he thought, I'll lose it to her. 

Brienne hadn't given any indication of noticing, on the other hand, though he knew the thought of Cersei must have crossed her mind. She remained silent, staring into the abyss, right at the mouth of hell. Perhaps it was because of her mindful composure that Jaime complied.

“Read it to me, wench,” he said with far more gentleness than she appeared to have expected. 

A placid smile demurely crept onto her face. He shifted under the sheets and brought his head to rest on her shoulder, his nose gracing the slope of her neck, as one of her hands played with his hair and the other held the book firmly in place, right before her eyes.

“I keep thinking about this river somewhere,” she began, “with the water moving really fast. And these two people in the water, trying to hold onto each other, holding on as hard as they can, but in the end it's just too much. The current's too strong. They've got to let go, drift apart. That's how it is with us. It's a shame, Kath, because we've loved each other all our lives. But in the end, we can't stay together forever.”

The soft, dulcet sound of her voice lulled him to sleep that night. Her words slurred as he eased into a peaceful slumber – indistinct, unimportant, immemorable. If he had listened, Jaime may have noticed that her eyes were haunted by thoughts of their own river – the one that, later on, would carry them asunder. 

 

 

PRESENT DAY, LONDON

The doorbell rang and Tyrion waved off the maid, getting to his feet and walking languidly toward the door. Jaime was on the other side of it, a plastic bag hanging from his wrist and a bottle of wine in his one good hand.

“I'm early,” Jaime announced.

“Precisely,” Tyrion acknowledged, “and therein lies my quandary. But, please, do come in.”

Jaime brushed past his brother and disappeared into the house. “Your book sucked,” he called from the dining room. Tyrion followed Jaime and grabbed the bottle from him, handing it over to Shae as he went to sit at the head of the table. 

“Yeah, I figured that much when you called me to say that Virginia Woolf had been turned into your dog's brunch. Very posh of your dog, if I might add.” Tyrion inched closer to the table and sent a curious look at the plastic bag. “New reading material?” the younger Lannister asked as he pointed in its general direction. 

“Guilty as charged,” Jaime said and put his hands up in the air, a smile playing with the corners of his lips. Tyrion raised an eyebrow, the question swimming in his eyes. “Never Let Me Go,” Jaime told him.

“A bit desperate of you, brother, but I promise I won't.”

“By Kazuo Ishiguro.”

“Oh,” Tyrion interjected, “I wasn't expecting that. What brought this sudden interest about?”

“I caught sight of it on my way here. The title may have taken me down memory lane, I will neither confess nor deny.”

“Cersei doesn't read.”

“Not Cersei,” Jaime barked. “Brienne.” Tyrion's eyes widened as he leaned back on his seat and crossed his legs only to uncross them again – blatantly taken aback. Jaime ignored the gesture and carried on. “She was into medieval literature, but I remember her saying this was one of her favourite.” 

“Terribly sad,” Tyrion told him and, at Jaime's frown, added, “the book. The boy dies, the bitch dies, they all die.”

“Well, thank you for the heads up,” Jaime muttered sarcastically. “Can't wait to reach the end, now.”

With a flick of his wrist, Tyrion brushed the comment aside and risked one look at the clock behind Jaime. The motion was distressingly conspicuous to the older Lannister, who looked at his watch and back at his younger brother. 

“We should start,” Jaime said and reached out toward the bread basket. He retrieved a slice, tore it off after several failed attempts and popped a piece into his mouth. “I'm famished! When is food going to arrive? And what was it you wanted to talk about, by the way?”

“We are waiting for someone,” Tyrion told him, deliberately neglecting his last question.

“Not Cersei, I hope.” Tyrion shook his head and Jaime popped another piece of bread into his mouth, thoughtfully chewing on it. “Varys? Please, not Varys. The way his bald head catches the light is quite distracting. I can't shake off the feeling that I'm staring at a mirror ball – makes me want to break into a rendition of Dancing Queen whenever he is around.” 

Tyrion rolled his eyes and was about to make some glib remark, when the doorbell rang – its sound reverberating in the vastness of the house. Again, Shae made for the door and, again, Tyrion waved her off. He threw one final look at his brother and caught him staring at his stump. After some time, Jaime looked up and offered a smile, though the warmth he tried to convey didn't seem to reach his eyes. An ever-present sadness had taken refuge there and, although Jaime had learnt to live with it, was even comfortable with its intrusion, Tyrion found himself unable to tolerate the shadow it cast on his sibling's visage. The shorter man stood up and, after patting the other's knee, walked out of the room. 

This time, when Tyrion opened the door, a wide back was all the greeting he received. Brienne must have heard the sound of the turning door knob, but her body -toned and strong as it was- appeared to have some difficulty acknowledging this fact. 

“Jaime is here,” the man heard himself say.

Brienne was struggling to control her breathing, looking down on the street without truly seeing. She was wearing a thick sweater but her arms tightened around herself – attempting to contain a semblance of the balance she had stricken after so long without him. Her eyes closed and she felt the wind whipping at her face, bitingly cold. The door was closed and a hand was laid on the back of her knee. 

“You don't have to do this. Not today,” she heard Tyrion say. “Look, Brienne, I'm not going to lie here. You'll need to be strong for this, one of you needs to be, and neither you nor me truly believes Jaime can be that man - not after finding out he lost twelve years of his children's lives. If you can't do it, if you can't face this or don't want to, this is your exit – right here, right now. But I want you know something more... once you cross this door, if you decide that it's worth a shot, I'll be there for you. Because you're not alone. Your children are not alone. Neither of you will ever be alone again. Do you hear me?”

Brienne opened her eyes and looked down into Tyrion's mismatched ones. There was reassurance there. He saw her strength even when she failed to find it within herself. 

Without losing another moment, without adding another second to those twelve years, Brienne nodded her head and turned to enter the house. 

Each step she took toward him seemed to be harder; every breath up to that moment, shallower. She remembered a time when it had been effortless, a force of nature drawing them together, but it had been so long since then. She couldn't quite tell whether the feeling of estrangement was spurred by the changes she had undergone during their time apart or by her fear of finding a Jaime she wouldn't be able to recognise. A myriad of emotions churned within her chest, folding in on themselves, smothering all logic and shattering her defenses. She bit her lip, as if repressing a scream, and pushed past them – past the longing and the hopelessness, past the thrill and the fear, the resentment and the guilt –, past all of them, and closer, closer to him, closer still. 

When they reached the door at the end of the corridor, Tyrion stepped aside and pressed his back to the opposite wall. He waited patiently as she struggled with herself to take that final step and when she did, when she finally breached the distance between her past and her future, all bindings fell apart and time came to a standstill.


	5. Fighting Suspicions

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know you wanted to murder me after last chapter, so here it is - Brienne and Jaime's reunion -, though it might not go as you expected, just saying. Keep in mind that Jaime is a very complex character. He'll make the right decision because, come on, it's Brienne we're talking about and he always seems to be better around her, but I can't ignore the fact that there're many facets of the character that I need to explore in order to be faithful. Plus, we all love Jaime's shades of grey!!!  
> Thank you for the kind comments you left. I'll try to go back an answer the ones that I left unattended.   
> So, well, get into it already! ;)

FIGHTING SUSPICIONS

 

Brienne stared at the man before her as she stood on the threshold, arms crossed and lips pursed. Jaime had his back towards her and was looking out the window, into Tyrion's backyard – a garden dressed in Autumn colours, looking as dejected as the man himself. He had the palm of his hand pressed against the glass as if he were trying to filter through it and slip away. His shoulders seemed to be sagging under some terrible, invisible force and his head appeared to be bowed in prayer, though Brienne had never heard him pray. There was something about him, Brienne thought, something so defeated. This realization stole the breath away from her, leaving her speechless. That was not the man she had been expecting, not the man she had known and loved and even cherished in her memory. There was none of the Lannister pride, none of his past slickness. Or so she had thought until he spoke.

“Staring is rude,” he said offhandedly, and the provocation – a remark so like the ones his old self would have made – brought about her own streak of defiance, sharp and feverish.

“Never thought I'd see the day when the infamous Jaime Lannister would concern himself with silly notions of decorum,” she replied. The sound of her voice seemed to trigger something in Jaime, who fisted his hand and pressed his forehead against the window. Brienne saw as the muscles on his back tensed, his shoulders rising and falling with every breath he took – mollifying what, she didn't know. Then, it all happened so unexpectedly. He span around and gasped as his eyes met hers across the room. His lips were moving but no sound was coming out – only his deep, ragged breath, which seemed to fill the room with an intimacy reserved for lovers alone. He strode toward her and paused, staggering with the sudden interruption of his momentum. He raised a hand as if reaching out to her, dropped it and raised it again to rub his eyes. 

Across the room, Jaime felt his walls crumble down – the void of her absence acutely perceived as the fortress he had erected fell apart at the seams. He wanted to touch her, to hold her, to prove she wasn't a ghost returned to him from the ashes of a desperate reminiscence. His need was punctuated by the blush a cold breeze had painted on her cheeks, by the hue of her eyes that seemed to deepen as she regarded the caprice of his ways – suspicious, uncertain, enthralled –, by that hair of hers that now run long, and wild, and free down to the curve of her waist. Her carmine lips, accentuated by the thick, burgundy sweater – a mouth his fingers itched to trace and reacquaint with. She had never been a beauty by none of the conventional standards, but she had been beautiful to him in all her righteousness and compassion. She had always been a strong woman for one needs to be strong to posses such traits. However, little of the sharp edges seemed to be present now – her strength softened by something he couldn't quite put his finger on. He wanted to get lost in all her contradictions – in the maid and the warrior –, but the realization that he had lost all claims to her body, to her mind and heart – and such a beautiful heart, at that – forced him to restrain. Every cell, every atom in his body pushing him toward her while some vague whispering of his conscience pulled him back – the opposing forces driving him to the end of his tither. 

“You-” he started and found himself at a loss. After twelve years, there was so much Jaime wanted to say, so much she needed to hear, but he didn't know where to begin. You still still leave me breathless, he thought. You shouldn't have left me, you should have fought me harder, you shouldn't have given up on us. I'm stupid, so stupid, to have lost you over the comfort I found in that which I already knew, over a woman who, as it turns out, I didn't know at all, whose love was so easy to win and so wrong. “You-”

“You're late,” Tyrion told her as he entered the dining room. “Late and wineless. After all these years, I expected a nice bottle of wine, to say the least.”

“You have enough wine in your cellar to put half a city to sleep,” Brienne told him with a smile, as she tore her gaze away from Jaime's. Tyrion chuckled and she went on to explain the reason behind her late arrival. “Hyle's car broke down. I had to walk seven blocks to catch a bus that would leave me close enough to your house.”

“Hyle?” Jaime heard himself ask. “Hyle Hunt?”

Brienne turned to him and studied his countenance for a while. She seemed to be weighing her options, to tell the truth or remain silent. The motives behind his curiosity, unclear to her. Tyrion's voice cut through the silence as he called for Shae to serve lunch already. He took his seat and motioned for Brienne to join him. 

As she approached the table, Brienne noticed that the spot on Tyrion's right side was littered with breadcrumbs, so she settled to his left. Jaime didn't join them for some time, but when he did, Brienne saw that he had lighted a cigarette. Her eyes followed his movement as he took the roll to his bottom lip and took a long drag. All of a sudden, Jaime, who had been avoiding her gaze since Tyrion entered the picture, met her eyes with a quota of mischief in his very own – their green goading her to comment on it. She bit hard on her bottom lip and served herself some wine, ignoring the smirk that appeared on his handsome face. 

Her unresponsiveness made him bolder, eager to elicit a reaction, as he placed his stump on the table beside the bottle she had just seized. Her gaze was drawn to it immediately and, against the soundest argument her logic could provide, Brienne found herself reaching for it, placing gentle fingers on its sutures, tracing the tender skin around it with reverent thoughtfulness. His breath hitched and Brienne withdrew her hand as if burnt. After a moment of prolonged stillness, she took a sip of her wine and looked up at him.

“Your hand,” she said, “what happened to it?”

“A couple of moths ago,” he started and took another drag of his cigarette, “I was sent on a mission to gather information about Vargo Hoat's involvement in drug trafficking. A rookie was assigned to me and, together, we infiltrated Hoat's little network. The rookie, however, made one fatal mistake when he chose to speak police lingo with one of our weakest links. Long story short, we got kidnapped, the kid died and I lost my hand,” he said raising his stump. “The Met sent a unit when they didn't hear from us, though it was too late for the rookie and damn too early for me.” The implication that he'd have rather died than lose his hand was there and it pulled at Brienne's heart. 

“Jaime is training rookies now,” Tyrion contributed. “Maybe he'll keep other kids from getting hands chopped off. Or maybe he'll get them to do exactly that. There're, after all, a few idiots in the Met who could do without a hand. Or a head.”

“Cheers to that,” Jaime echoed, putting his cigarette out, and they both drank heartily from their glasses. It was then that Shae entered the room and began serving their meal – the interruption prompting an amicable hush, which Jaime used as leverage to study Brienne with little concern for the uneasiness his direct gaze caused in her. After due deliberation, she cast her eyes up and stared directly into his – daring and unabated.

“What about you, wench?” Jaime asked as the maid left the room and Brienne's hand, which was hovering above the cutlery, abruptly faltered – the name leaving a sour taste on her tongue, though she didn't dare call him out on it for fear of bringing their old banter back to life. 

“What about me?” she managed to croak out. 

“What are you doing now?” he clarified. “The police force was your life. You fed on the adrenaline rush of kicking men's asses, on the sheer high of being right at the centre of the action – always the first to arrive and the last to depart, a force to be reckoned, pushing yourself harder and harder until there was no one who could rival you. But me, of course.”

Tyrion's fork paused midway to his mouth and clattered against the china as he dropped it to push himself up on his seat and swat at Jaime. The latter turned to him with a frown on his face. “You needed that,” Tyrion told him. “Maybe it'll knock some degree of modesty into you.”

“Little people often mistake truth for arrogance,” Jaime quipped and turned his gaze back to Brienne – the question persistent in his green hues. 

“I keep racehorses,” she told him noncommittally. “I raise and sell them. We also have an inn, passed down to me by my father.”

“We?” Jaime heard himself ask. For a moment, he pictured Hyle sharing those moments with Brienne, taking what Jaime had once scorned because he had been too scared of the unknown, too relentless too see beyond Cersei, too haunted to believe he deserved better. He brushed the idea aside, dismissing it as preposterous. Brienne wouldn't settle for Hunt. Brienne wouldn't settle for anyone or anything. No, Brienne would rather stand alone than be with someone who was less than truthful, devoted and honourable - someone worth living, fighting, dying for. 

Brienne sent one nervous look toward Tyrion, who raised his glass and shrugged. The silent conversation stirred something unpleasant in Jaime – he felt as if there was a secret, a portentous secret, he was being left out of, as if some crucial detail was slipping through his fingers and, try as he may, Jaime couldn't grasp it. 

Finally, Brienne threw her hair over her shoulder – nervously, almost childishly, nothing flirtatious about it – and said, “Margaery, Sansa and I. We run the business together. And sometimes they babysit, though Cade and Hillie claim to be too old for that.”

“They babysit...” Jaime began and found himself unable to proceed. 

“My kids, Jaime. Cadogan and Tehila are my children.”

Suddenly, the urge to coil back into himself, yet to become someone else, was too strong to bare. What he had so easily brushed aside had been true, after all. Maybe the old Brienne wouldn't have settled, but the woman across from him was so different from the scarred girl he had loved. He couldn't help but wonder whether the girl was still there, somewhere behind those blue eyes. 

This Brienne possessed a quiet confidence, on the other side, so different from the hidden fragility he had known her for. The thought that Hyle Hunt had made her blossom where Jaime had obliterated was unbearable – unforgivable and unforgettable. He imagined all the smiles Hunt had brought to her face, all the kisses he had stolen from her, all the filthy whispers he had uttered as he planted his seeds on her womb and gifted her with motherhood, and made her feel a woman – loved, and cherished, and whole. She had forgot all about him and, separately, they had moved beyond the point of return. Rage made Jaime utter his next words, or maybe desperation. He could never truly separate the two. 

“Well, I can imagine how that went for you,” Jaime told her, the smile on his face sharp, acutely designed to cut. “Are they as brutish and graceless as you? Or did they, by any chance, inherit Hunt's unpolished charm and poor substitute for wit? Or better yet, they inherited it all. Wouldn't that be a sight to behold?”

Tyrion wanted to do something, anything that would salvage the only bond that kept Jaime rooted to a feeble semblance of humanity; but, much as in a car wreck, the younger Lannister found himself powerless to stop it and, yet, unable to look away. As he sat there, feeling useless and despondent, it was Brienne who brought herself out of the daze. She fished a piece of paper out of her bag and scribbled something on it while Jaime kept his eyes trained on her. After she finished, Tyrion realised that the paper was, in fact, a picture and the handwriting on its back didn't stand for a word but for a number, her phone number. 

She slid it toward Jaime, slung her bag over her shoulder and turned to leave. Brienne was at the threshold when she turned back. “Those, Jaime, are my children. Their names are Cadogan and Tehila and you'd do well to remember, even if we never cross paths again. If you decide that you can behave better than this, be better than this, give me a call. That's my phone on the back of the picture.” And with one final nod at Tyrion, Brienne Tarth made her way out onto the busy streets of London, leaving a perplexed Jaime behind.

Jaime remained still as he stared at the photograph. Nothing made sense and, for a minute, he wondered whether they, Tyrion and Brienne, were playing a cruel joke on him, but one look in his brother's direction and the thought slipped his mind. He then wondered how naïve Brienne must have been to expect a call from him after disclosing the existence of her children, of a life beyond him, with no place for this broken man. Jaime experienced a wide spectrum of emotions before settling on curiosity. Dangerous, he thought; but his hand reached the photograph and turned it around in one swift movement, and everything seemed to stop – time, life, existence. 

Just then, Shae entered the room offering dessert. Tyrion grabbed the sleeve of her shirt and pulled the maid down, bringing her down to his level and staring at her with an almost frantic glint in his eyes. 

“Whiskey, Shae,” he told her. “Bring the whiskey. We're going to need it today.”

The maid scolded at him for, though the little man never drank it in the afternoons, the demand left a lot to be desired. But she sent one look toward Jaime and caught a glimpse of the picture before him and, without a word, she drew the key from the front pocket of her jeans and hastened toward the cellar to look for the whiskey of the oldest breed.


	6. Chapter Closed, Chapter Revisited

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know, I know! This comes way too late, but the truth is that writing this chapter was harder than I expected. Also, it's the longest one I've written, so YAY (?)   
> I had to split it, though. Otherwise, it would have gone on and on, and, though I enjoy my ramblings, I don't know if you'll like them yourselves.   
> This chapter left me mentally exhausted, too many emotions to convey and each of them so different from each other. I wanted the changes that each character undergoes here to be a smooth transition and I think that was the most consuming part of it all. I trust you'll tell me if something sounds off. That been said, dig in! :)  
> Ah, also, thank you to all the fabulous people who have left comments! I'm sorry I didn't have time to answer all of them. I'll try to get back to that. My life is utter chaos right now. Anyways, thank you!

CHAPTER CLOSED, CHAPTER REVISITED

 

The apartment was eerie quiet. The morning light pouring in through the windows made the rooms seem larger and, in the middle of that apparent vastness, a woman in her mid-thirties sat by the counter, sipping her coffee as she looked out on the city. She felt detached – the impression that she had lost all remnants of her old self was too vivid, too intense and final for her to truly admire the view. Brienne realised that she had spent her whole life like that – losing parts of herself to the cruelty and negligence of others – and had, as a result, shed skin to grow new tissue. The innocence had vanished and the girl who had held onto foolish dreams of unblemished and pure happiness, who had dreamt of boundless and unconditional love, who had seen poetry in every crevice of life – that girl had vanished, too. The maid became the warrior and the woman gave way to the mother in her. Perhaps that was what life was about – leaving parts of oneself behind, letting go of people and places that provide comfort to seek new adventures and new faces and build oneself higher. Brienne had moved on, but kept carrying the void Jaime had left wherever she went, whoever she faced – the shadow losing its magnificence, though never the company it bore. But she had seen him the day before, had brushed his wound with her fingertips and returned the fervour of his gaze, and the shadow had risen from the ruins of her past – its presence imposing and all-encompassing then, as she sat there with the image of him engraved on her mind, the changes in him playing themselves out before her unseeing eyes. 

Hyle had left for work, prattling about his latest conquest and his bedroom prowess - words that fell on deaf ears as Brienne shut him out. He had warned her he wouldn't be coming back that night and advised her to wander around the city and clear her mind of the infamous Jaime Lannister. Although he hadn't known of her quest the night before, Hyle had seen the surrender in her posture and the dolefulness in her eyes as soon as she set foot back in his apartment - the same defeat he had witnessed twelve years ago when she left London for the countryside. She was returning the next day, back to Bourton-on-the-Water, and he didn't know whether he'd see her again, but noticed she needed space more than the idle chatter or the frivolous company he could provide. 

After Hyle left, Brienne grabbed her mobile and dialed a number, but her call went straight to voicemail. She rolled down her list of contacts and dialed another one. This time, a woman picked up. 

“Hold on,” Sansa said, “I'll put you on loudspeaker.” Brienne heard her fumble with the phone and call Margaery with expectant urgency in her voice. A door opened and closed, followed by a hushed conversation on the other side of the line. “She said she'd call when the quest was over.”

“The quest?” Margaery asked. 

“The course of true love never did run smooth.” Sansa quoted. “She's on a romantic quest to retrieve her knight in shinning armour, though he's more of a Byronic hero than a Shakespearean one, wouldn't you say?”

“Hero? Oh, please... His only saving grace is his voice. He's like a hot line for sex phone. Try porn hero, instead.”

“Only saving grace?” Sansa asked, dumbfounded. “Have you seen his hair? It's commercial material! And his eyes? His gaze? So fierce, and penetrating, and just filled with this unrestrained intensity. Heathcliff's impersonation, if you ask me.”

“You hate Heathcliff,” Margaery rebuked.

“No, I hate Wuthering Heights. I hate the fact that Catherine and Heathcliff's love never came to be, physically. And then, they die. It's so sad.”

“I'm here,” Brienne interjected,“just in case you were you wondering.”

“Brienne,” she heard Margaery say, “what happened? You told him, didn't you? You confronted Jaime, told him about Cade and Hillie, made him feel like the insensitive bastard he is – you did, didn't you? How did it go? What did he say? And more important yet, how are you feeling?”

“Did he run after you, take your hand and spin you around just to sweep you off your feet with a scorching kiss?” Sansa followed. 

“As if Brienne would let him,” Margaery commented. “There's a lot of grovelling to do before they get to the kissing, Sansa.”

“I haven't heard from him yet,” Brienne stated, ignoring the mention of a kiss altogether. The declaration was followed by a loaded silence, which she didn't dare read into. “This is not Jaime,” she said. “There's something off. He won't turn his back on the kids, I know, but this is not him. The old Jaime would have followed me, demanding an explanation. He would have yelled, he would have been consumed by desperation, kicking walls and shaking me until I answered every single question. This is not him and it scares me far beyond words.”

“Oh, sweetie,” Sansa interjected. “He just learned he's been a father for twelve years. Jaime missed twelve birthdays. He missed their first steps, their first words, the first tooth that poked through, their learning to ride a bike, their pranks and mishaps. He's processing this, coming to terms with the idea that his kids are not babies, that they will already have an image of the father they never met, the one they want for themselves. Your children are filled with expectations, Brienne. He's wrapping his head around it, negotiating with himself. Can you imagine all the uncertainties he must be feeling? You need to give him time. He'll come to you, eventually.”

“Are you justifying his actions?” Margaery asked, indignant. “Twelve years ago, they had a fight – a fight over your father; correct me if I'm wrong. Brienne drove over to his apartment to talk about it, only to find him with Cersei. He left her for his sister, Sansa! His sister! Brie had to do the walk of shame – rejected and pregnant. How do you explain that to your kids? Brienne didn't want Cadogan and Tehila to see that example, to grow up thinking that it was natural, that it was right. Can you blame her? And let's suppose, for a second, that you do, he didn't want to have anything to do with her!”

“Have you ever thought that he must have had his reasons?” Sansa asked. Brienne had never intended to turn their separation into a dichotomy where everyone who had witnessed their bliss was forced to take sides due to her grief – or his, if there had been any on his behalf. She had never truly blamed Jaime for choosing Cersei over her. She had never reproached him for discarding her so easily and disparaging what they had shared and who they had been because of it. She hadn't done it back when she returned home, requesting a place under her father's roof. - feeling like a failure and a burden. She hadn't done it when the contractions hit her, prostrating her on the bathroom floor, and she had to crawl out toward the kitchen phone. She certainly hadn't done it when she was pushing in the OR all by herself, with her father diseased and her friends out of town. Brienne had never truly blamed him and she didn't believe herself capable of doing it. For all Jaime had been toward the end, he had also unveiled wonders unimaginable to her before him. She had loved him and, because of it, blaming Jaime would have felt too much like disloyalty – not to him, but to what they had lived and faced together. However, Sansa's defense of him left her aghast and Margaery must have been as appalled as Brienne felt, for the brunette gasped as if slapped. “I'm not saying they were sound reasons, not even sane ones. But have you considered it? Has it even crossed your mind? That in his own logic, Jaime might have felt as if he was doing the right thing, that he might have been led astray? Come on, Brie, you must have wondered about it yourself. It wasn't the first fight you'd had and it didn't feel as irrevocable as it turned out to be. What changed between the moment he slammed the door to your apartment, enraged and forlorn, and the moment he said his last farewell on his doorstep?”

Brienne had indeed wondered about it. She had stayed whole nights awake, her hand rubbing circles on her protruding stomach, soothing the babies there as she navigated through the labyrinths in her mind. She had sat in front of the telephone, staring at it with the question on the tip of her tongue and her fingers itching to dial the number that would put an end to her torment. And every time, she had reminded herself of his last behest. Jaime had wanted her out of his life forever and she had planned on respecting that – until she saw the burning desire in her children's eyes and had decided that she wouldn't be the one to murder the hope in their hearts. 

“I support you,” Sansa said. “We support you.”

“I know you do,” Brienne assuaged. “That is why I forgive Margaery every time she helps them with their pranks or colours their drinks with wine and tells me it's blueberry juice and forgive you, Sansa, when you sneak them chocolate bars after they had their teeth brushed or let them stay past bedtime to read them stories of maidens and knights.”

“You knew about the wine?” Margaery asked with a laugh.

“I'm a mother, Marge. We know everything.”

Brienne enquired after Cadogan and Tehila. There was nothing she would have wanted more than hearing their voices and picture the smile on their faces as they shared anecdotes with the occasional embellishment that only children, with their voracious imaginations, are capable of. But they would have asked about their father and there was little Brienne could have told them then – choosing instead to prolong their idyll, in case anything should go awry. 

After hanging up, Brienne shrugged on her coat and left the apartment. There was someone she had been longing to visit, someone who had evinced an unassailable fortitude – the unpretentious strength that whispered its encouragement when all else called for surrender – and had, therefore, demonstrated that, contrary to Brienne's earlier beliefs, standing tall while everything else fell to pieces was a way of battling, as praiseworthy as the bravest attack. Catelyn Stark had disclosed, in life, a tenacity, a resoluteness and valour such as she had never seen before – or after. Brienne had looked up to that woman and it had been the memory of her which had encouraged the girl to push through every adversity and move forward, out and away from the darkness that sometimes threatened to swallow her in. 

She visited the cemetery that morning and stayed with Catelyn until the sun was high in the sky. She told her about Sansa, about Bourton-on-the-Water and the life her daughter had built for herself after everything that had come to pass. Brienne had always been reserved – choosing to remain silent when her words were of no substance –, but, as she sat on the soft, cool grass, the younger woman found her tongue loosened by unabashed gratitude. She felt that every memory she had forged – with her children, with Sansa and Margaery – was vividly printed on her mind's eye because of the quite strength Catelyn had bestowed on her and which had let her live every single moment with no tint of regret. Brienne had experienced happiness after Jaime because she had opened up to life without him, had made herself vulnerable to the pain and learned to shoulder it and overcome it.

She found herself talking about Cadogan and Tehila, about the business all three girls helped to set up and talking about her father, too, but avoided mentioning Jaime altogether – knowing, as she did, their shared animosity. When she checked the time, Brienne found, to her utter incredulity, that she had spent hours like that, so she left the flowers she had brought and walked out of the place feeling lighter than she had in over a decade. 

After visiting Catelyn, she wandered aimlessly around London. The drizzle glued her fringe to her forehead and the cold sipped through her pores, bringing a rosy colour to the the exposed skin of her hands and face, but she kept walking – feeling that every step drove away her fears of chances lying ahead, ominously blowing the winds of change. 

She entered a few shops and bought souvenirs for the children, who had never set foot outside Bourton. By the time she had settled on the perfect gift for them, Brienne was exhausted and benumbed. She hailed a cab and reached Hyle's building by dusk. The last sunrays cast a tender glow on the city, feebly tracing the contours of its structures. She crossed the street and raised her gaze to greet the doorman when her eyes met his and she faltered midstep. 

Jaime was standing before her – his back resting against the brick wall, a cigarette perched on his lip, eyes as green as forest depths following her every move. He seemed to be conveying an urgent message with those eyes, warning her not to escape, promising to seize her if she did. There was an underlining defiance in the rough lines of his visage, punctuated by his tightened jaw and tensed mouth. His hair, wild and unkempt. His posture, rigid and unyielding. His stubble casting a shadow over his face that made him look feral in the faint light of dusk. Jaime was wearing the same clothes he had worn the night before, but they were creased, as if he had slept in them – or hadn't slept at all. Brienne would have been scared of him, she would have been terrified of this swift unpredictability, were it not for the sombre lassitude she discerned in the midst of his turmoil.

Suddenly, he cast aside his cigarette, pushed himself off the wall with the sole of his shoe and stalked up to her, halting when they were face to face, barely inches away. Jaime didn't even lower his gaze as he tried to pry the keys from the firm grasp she had them in. Despite the overlapping fire in his eyes, his touch had been so soft and mild, so unbelievable intimate, Brienne had almost closed her eyes. Catching herself at the very last minute, she tightened her hold on the key chain and pulled back. 

“You have no right to be kind,” she told him – the feeling that he was scratching at her walls, attempting to crack them open and pulverize the protection they bestowed on her, perceived as a violation, the trespassing of some unspoken boundary. “No right,” she repeated and pushed past him to open the front door. Her words had placated the inferno behind his eyes but tore at something deep inside of him. 

The ride on the elevator was brief, but charged with a ruminative silence – her eyes trained on the doors, his on her. Brienne's scent reached him from across the enclosed space – its sweet aroma overcoming him with a placid sense of déjà vu, as if he had experienced that very moment a thousand times in a thousand different lives –, soothing in its familiarity. Her hair had been moistened by the drizzle, the tips of it soaking the back of her shirt and the slope of her breasts. She shivered under his watchful gaze and, for a moment, he wondered whether he could still elicit those shivers himself.

Whereas her presence hushed the frantic voices in his mind, his seemed to weigh her down. It was almost as if Brienne could anticipate every impulse burning his insides as he repressed each of them, stamping down the urge to relinquish his hold on sanity and becoming pliant by the mere sight of her. 

“Cadogan and Tehila,” he said – tasting the sound of their children names rolling off his tongue for the first time.

The elevator doors slid open and Brienne hastened to get out. She reached the door to Hunt's apartment and struggled with the lock as he followed her forlornly. When the door opened, Brienne stepped aside and motioned for Jaime to step inside, and, just as he was passing by her, she murmured, “Cade and Hillie, Jaime. They hate their names. You can call your children Cade and Hillie, instead.”

“Cade and Hillie,” he echoed, as if he had said it a hundred times. The thought that he could have – could have said their names a hundred times, could have been in their lives from their first breath, could have kissed their wounds and made them smile, and could have, could have, could have – had him reaching for the nearest chair by the counter. 

After Brienne had closed the door, she walked up to him and placed the keys on the surface before him. “Coffee? Tea?” she asked.

Jaime laid a hand on hers and looked at her until she returned his gaze. “Sit,” he said, “just sit, please.” Brienne regarded him for a moment that felt like a lifetime to him. Jaime, who had always bounced back or, at least, moved on, seemed to be, right then, at the brink of destruction – a step away from falling into its abyss. The sight had her complying. She reached for the chair opposite him and settled there. “Tell me about them.”

There was no smirk on his face, no mischief in his eyes. She looked at him – at the attractive man sitting before her who had taken so many wrong turns, at the man who had been always misunderstood by everyone else, undervalued by himself, covering every uncertainty, every failure and vulnerability with a layer of cynicism and conceit. She looked at him. Twelve years later, broken and diminished, and he still preserved a tinge of his boyish charm – hardened by life and the more charming for that. She examined his face. It was wide open then. Brienne could have said anything and anything could have happened. That was the unpredictable Jaime. A faux pas and everything could spiral out of control, and still Brienne choose to risk it, to venture into this new experience with everything that she had – just to see if he could take it, just to see if he could stay and fight back for all he had given up once upon a time. 

“Tyrion once showed me a picture of you when you were a toddler,” she began. “I knew Cade would grow up to resemble you from the moment I first held him in my arms. Whenever I look at him, I think of the child in the photograph – the young Jaime Lannister. And although there's something of you in him, Cade – he is your opposite, really. He's timid and cautious, always studying the world around him, awed by it. Cade is very perceptive, too. He senses what others need, even when people don't know it themselves, and he's just so content to provide it – an innocent caress, a kiss on the cheek, the purest smile and the world bursts into a song.” Brienne was staring off into the distance, overcome by the memories, when a particular one struck her, bringing a carefree chuckle from her. “There was this one time when Cadogan stole a cookie. I arrived home to find the kitchen covered in flour. He felt so bad about stealing the bloody cookie that he set himself to bake a dozen more.”

“What about her?” Jaime heard himself ask, enraptured by the soft cadence of her voice and the tender glow in her eyes. 

“Hillie?” Brienne questioned, without pausing for an answer. “Tehila resembles Cersei so much and I-”

“Do you resent her?”

“I love her despite it, I love her because of it.” Brienne continued. “The moment I noticed Tehila was the carbon copy of your sister was the moment I understood that my daughter represented a chance to start again, to amend past mistakes, carried down a long line of blood relations. I've big dreams for Cade, but I envision a magnificent destiny lying ahead of Hillie. The legacy ends with her. She will not be defined by a past she took no part in. She will rise above it, changing the course of generations. Tehila is her own person – she will make mistakes, but she will learn from them. And even if she doesn't, I'll love her still. I'll love her forever.”

Brienne chanced a look at Jaime. His eyes gleamed with unshed tears. He was biting his bottom lip, as if he were suppressing a sob – biting on it so hard that she could see its colour draining, the tissue turning white. The action alone was a betrayal of himself, to expose his feelings like that, to leave them in the open for her to see, to dissect and surmise. She could scent his pain and its fragrance was intoxicating – intimate and trusting, utterly unguarded. 

“She's his father's daughter, you know?” Jaime broke down then. He laid his stump on the counter between them and buried his face on the crook of his elbow. His good hand pulled at his hair and, though his shoulders shook, no sound came out of his mouth. She reached out and hesitated for a moment, but ended up placing her hand on top of his, prying his fingers from his golden strands. “She's you, Jaime. Hillie is all you, nothing but you – and she is perfect.”

“I thought the world would stop after you left,” Jaime said after pulling himself together, his voice hoarse. “You were my best friend and I thought the world would stop. But it didn't.”

“It never does, Jaime.”

“It should have. It felt like it should have, but it didn't and a part of me hated it for it,” he said, something akin to desperation in his clear, green eyes. “Look at us now. Twelve years later – the same sun rising and setting every day, people being born, people dying and the world still turning –, and I... I –”

They sat in silence for a while, until Brienne felt that too much had been shared and stood up to boil some water. She retrieved two mugs from the highest cupboard and set them on the counter, throwing a tea bag in each of them and pouring hot water when the kettle began to whistle.

“You were my best friend,” he repeated, after she handed him one of the mugs. His tone was beseeching – a question, an imploration heavy in the air. 

“We were more than friends, Jaime. More than friends to me,” she told him, meeting his gaze with unregretting irrevocability. “We were friends, and enemies, and lovers. You were everything to me.”

“And now I'm not.”

“Now you are not,” she confirmed – a death sentence for a man who had already seen a procession of dying men. Her tone, imbued with vehemence and resolution.

Jaime knew he had no right to, but the finality she was conveying – as if he were a page long turned in her book, a chapter forever closed – moved something inside of him that was too benumbingly searing, too blindingly iridescent to be mistaken for acceptance. After all, there were so many things she didn't know – secrets he had kept from her out of fear and shame –, things Jaime had never said because he truly didn't see the point in them – insecurities he had easily dismissed, only to have them revealing themselves, have them destroying the safe haven they had become back then, when they were still young. The questions she hadn't asked and the assuredness she displayed despite it undid the last knot that was keeping him grounded. 

He kicked his chair back and stalked up to her – all fury and glorious transparency. “I left you for my sister. Does it make you flinch in disgust? Is it so revolting, wench?” He pressed his stump against the counter and laid his hand on the back of her chair, trapping Brienne there. “I left you for her. Do you know why?”

Jaime leaned in – his nose skimming the line of her jaw. Brienne stood still as she felt his laboured breath fanning against the column of her neck. She was rigid under him, unshakable in her resolve. Jaime drew back and brought his hand up to her face, forcing her to look into his eyes. “Because,” he said hoarsely, “you were a friend, an enemy, a lover; but Cersei was my other half.”

Brienne pressed the palms of her hands against his chest and shoved him away – far more gently than she'd thought herself capable of. He stumbled back and slid down to the floor as his back made contact with the wall – a move spurred by the emotional strain manifest in the languor of his sinews rather than by the force of her shove. 

“You always believed me to be better than I truly was,” he told her. “You didn't know all my dark thoughts, the feelings that ate at me like a disease, propagating in my bloodstream, consuming any goodness I may have had in me. Cersei understood that. She encouraged it and it felt as if she was setting me free. She unleashed me, but the truth is that what I thought of as freedom was nothing but an illusion. Maybe that's what freedom is, just a mirage propelling us forward, deeper into the void. I was her puppet all along, hers to manipulate. The boundaries you showed me, on the other hand, the strict moral code you adhered to, the one that had once seemed naive, the unembellished utopia of a young, innocent girl – they were the real thing. Back then, I felt constrained by them, limited by your compassion, your integrity, the obduracy of your romantic notions.” Jaime had both legs pressed against his chest, but he stretched one until the tip of his foot brushed the tip of hers – seeking a closeness he knew he didn't deserve, but desired nevertheless. “Cersei was my other half because all the cruelty that was restrained in me was enticingly unbound in her. She was my other half – not my better one, though I realised it much too late. You – my friend, my enemy, my lover – you were the best thing that happened to me.”

She had remained silent throughout his diatribe and, as it reached an end, Brienne found herself struggling to make sense out of every word that had come tumbling out of his lips. It was as if a tornado had hit her and left everything in ruins. His emotions were all over the place – the only tangible proof of their presence was the hot, charged air that seemed to be pressing down on her. The silence stretched before them, acrid and caustic, until he broke it once more. 

“What do you want from me?” he asked her. “What can I give to you that you won't mistrust after all the pain I've caused? And if I offered it, would you take it now?”


	7. The Broken Lion's Roar

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, people! I'm terribly sorry for such a late update and, leaving all sentimentalism aside, I want to explain the tardiness because I think you deserve an explanation. I've been going through some rough times with problems that didn't directly affect me, but affected people I love very much. I needed to be there for them and even if I could have written this chapter and posted it before, I didn't want these problems to get in the way. This is already kinda angsty and I like to keep the angst in control, but if I let any of the surrounding drama filter through to the story, it would have honestly escalated to slit-your-wrists fic and that was not my intention at all; so I decided to wait until I could write from an objective perspective. I didn't want readers to go around commiting suicide all over the world, not a good reputation, uh?  
> Anyways, thank you for waiting and thanks to those who have never given up on this, especially to alors and rg. Also, a special thanks to the amazing Ro_Nordmann for making such a beautiful banner, which, if you're curious, can be seen at: http://i1179.photobucket.com/albums/x392/rosalinabambina/98dc6d8fc5620121a6d64ee8ab36d11f_zps24e27d0f.jpg  
> Last but not least, a huge welcome to all those people who decided to give the story a shot and gosh! I feel like I'm making a speech for the Oscars... enough narcissism, Florencia! LOL  
> Well, before you go on reading, I want to tell you how much I appreciate your comments and let you know that I'll be writing replies to all of them- yes, the ones from previous chapter, too- soon.   
> Have fun, I hope. And, God, isn't it nice to be back?

THE BROKEN LION'S ROAR

 

The wind blew across the front yard, a cutting edge to the cold it carried. Jaime pulled up the lapels of his coat and glanced apprehensively at Brienne, who stood distressfully silent by his side with her hand hovering over the cottage's doorbell. Strands of her straw-coloured hair danced before his eyes, softly brushing his jaw before the wind died and her hair fell complaisantly back on her shoulders. There was something in the way she held herself, in the ambivalence behind her motions, in the abstemious reluctance to meet his gaze that had something tightening in his chest, pressing against his lungs and piercing his heart, and, all of a sudden, Jaime found himself clenching his hand – his nails digging crescents into the skin of his palm – to keep himself from howling in despondency, from hitting the door that stood between a past filled with wrong decisions and a future holding second chances. 

Jaime closed his eyes against the myriad of emotions that sprung from the fleeting instant of uncertainty he had witnessed before Brienne dropped her hand – the flames licking at his soul, beckoning him deeper into the darkness, a different kind of hell threatening to swallow him whole. And in midst of that struggle, a fervid reminiscence arose, providing the only light that promised to carry him safely to the other side – its awakening paradoxically lulling him into a placid torpor.

He remembered them, a version of themselves, twelve years younger – ravenous with desire, avid in their curiosity, uncouth and crude and terribly reckless through their explorations. He recollected fragments of those memories – the popping of buttons as he fisted his hands in her shirt, stretching it until the garment tore open; the feel of her skin as his tongue trailed the column of her neck and her gasp as it slid across her sternum; the rustling of fabric as she pulled his singlet over his head and he slipped his hands under her bra, unclasping it at the back; their laboured breathing as he pushed his denim-clad bulge against her core and she responded to his desire by arching her back in pure, blissful ecstasy, pressing her bare breasts against his chest; the ghosting of her fingers across his pelvis muscles and the metallic whisper of his zipper as she dragged it down; the smoothness of her thighs as he divested her of her pants and fit the crook of his elbow to the back of her knee, anchoring her to the wall; the friction of their bodies as they chased away a merciless voracity for each other with artless fumbling; the feel of her cropped hair between his calloused fingers that tugged gently as they glided through her silken tresses and the magical instant, a moment frozen in time,forever burned into his memory, when she would lean into his touch and open her eyes to foster a wondrous, thrilling intimacy – communing minds devouring the silent confidences revealed through the bright specks of colour. 

Sometimes she'd break the connection, look away, and Jaime, incensed by the glimpse of her skepticism, would pull harder at her hair – a short, brusque tug for her to believe his desire, to embrace the reverent orisons uttered against her mouth, mingling with her pants, as if his naked fragility wasn't enough for her and she'd otherwise settle for the pretense of being desired. He would guide her lips to his own eager mouth with the hilt of his hand pressed to her scalp and her hair firmly held in his grip, drawing her closer and closer still, biting on her flesh and bruising with his teeth – prompting her, with fierce intensity, to pry her eyes open and see his devotion, so unequivocally hers. And then, it'd happen – magically, innocently, humbling in its obeisance. Her eyelids would part, her lashes brushing his cheekbones and her fingers trembling on his jaw, and she'd meet his gaze with trepid wonder veiling her fears, only to shed them for the sweetly addictive trust Jaime craved.

That intimacy they would share when, in the throes of love and passion and the making of a religion so thoroughly theirs, her blue eyes would meet his green ones briefly, but most eloquently, had been loaded with an emotion too candid, too pristine and sacred to be expressed through anything other than the canvas that were their gazes, where every brush of the heart would paint their irides with faithful and confident strokes. 

Jaime had never told her how much he loved her, had never described how intensely, hadn't even attempted to. Words, the very thing that had come so easily to him before, didn't seem enough at times like those. He could have disclosed the depth of his love, its width, its length, the blazing fire it ignited, the warmth it exuded and the light it casted – a candour that clung to his every fiber; but she'd have only been looking at its spectrum, at the dispersion of lights, a mere refraction of his emotions. His portrayal would have only been the prism, displaying the visible gamut of shades through artifice. Brienne would have seen their projection, distinct and splendid in appearance, but the particles of colour as they truly were, naturally inconspicuous and enigmatically extant, would have remained out of her reach, meant to be perceived in his own gaze where the love burned iridescent – a lighthouse guiding her to him through an ocean of fears and uncertainties. 

Words would have left her with a distortion of what he had felt then. His depiction would have been a blasphemy in its inaccuracy and her grasping, a heresy. Jaime had refused to make fools out of themselves, neither by being blasphemous nor by making her heretical, and in refusing to do so, he had offered Brienne an untainted love, triumphantly emerging from the corruption surrounding their lives. He had worshipped her and the irrefutable evidence of his worship had been in his own gaze, for she had experienced it by glimpsing into the infinity of shades – navigating through the spectrum in a daze. She had unveiled a world of colours to the man that had spent his whole life dealing in black and white, reaching out for true love in a world filled with liars and lies. 

His eyelids parted and he took the sight of her in, the shadow of the girl who had lain bare and unguarded in his arms and had trembled, come undone and gone limp before his very eyes. He let his gaze roam over the lines of her face looking for the innocent child who had haunted his dreams for the past twelve years and found a woman in its stead – a woman with the rosy tenderness of motherhood upon her cheeks, the wisdom of experience behind her blue hues and the concerns of adulthood perched on her brows. Her body, which had been sharp angles and taut muscles before, was now softened by the insinuation of curves – the sensible widening of her hips, the slight narrowing of her waist and the generous blossoming of her breasts – that her children, their children, had carved on her body during the pregnancy.

She looked at him, then – for the first time since they'd reached her town. Her eyes were wide and her gaze, utterly unguarded – a stunning blue of unfathomable depths. There was such sweet honesty in them – no accusation in her hues, no hint of it, but Jaime couldn't help but feel its ghost lingering in the crevices of their silence. And then she spoke, and her voice was a summer breeze, and the gentle drizzle of spring, and the autumnal shedding of leaves – all presented to him in the deadly cold of winter. 

“Whenever I thought of you, the old you, whether it was back at the beginning, when you were suspected of police misconduct and I was part of the team assigned to your case, or later on, following your absolution and during our time as partners, or even after that, after we started -” Brienne began only to halt abruptly, biting on her lower lip in plain dubiety and stealing furtive, timorous glances at the door as if she, too, could see poetic transcendence in the barrier. “I've seen all the facets there are to you. I've seen you dressed in vainglory and stripped bare by defeat; I've witnessed the caustic cynicism that you project as you erect walls to shut yourself off and witnessed a raw, captivating honesty that ensnares within its stronghold; I've beheld the sight of the great Jaime Lannister as he destroyed everything that was pure, sacred and good for just a sliver of regard, for the illusion of belonging and the crumbs of a meagre love and I've seen the coin land on the ground to uncover the other side – this Jaime who would scorn the acceptance craved and denied.” 

Brienne turned her face to him then, and met his gaze with a wistful glow in her own eyes – undisguised nostalgia weighing on the corners of her lips as she endeavoured to smile. “The only common thread to all these facets was your recklessness. No matter which Jaime you were, there always was that desperate impetuosity encompassing all of them – an impetuousness that sprang from the choking fear of losing what little you had, of finding yourself alone, lost and unloved.”

“Why are you telling me this?” Jaime found himself warily asking. “Why do you–”

“Because it's not just about you, Jaime – not anymore. Now, you're a father and if you thought you knew what fear truly was before this very moment, you'll realise that it was nothing in comparison to the utter terror of failing the only people who, you'll see, love you blindly – for they do love you. I need you to be aware of this step you're about to take and if you decide to take it, if you decide to become this man – their father, their mentor, their guardian –, you'll have to coexist with the fear, to remember who you want to be for them, for yourself. I know we, you and I both, made plenty of mistakes, things we can't erase or go back in time to correct, but I believe that we write our destinies and you have a promising one ahead of you. I believe, Jaime, that you can be an extraordinary father without losing all the things that make you who you are, for I never intended you to become anyone else; but if you find that you can't, this is the moment, here and now, to turn around and walk away – out of their lives before you even enter them,” she said and took a step back as if to show him that she wouldn't stop him, that he could retrace his steps down the gravel walk and all would be forgiven, all would forgotten. 

Jaime was torn between this beatific and poignant conviction of hers that he could be better – better than he was, better than he had been taught to be – and her belief that he could possibly want this outlet that she was so generously and vexatiously offering him; and for the first time in his life, he didn't feel the overpowering desire to meet expectations or scorn misgivings. For the first time, Jaime made a vow to himself, not to spite his father or preserve the phantom of a dwindling love, but because he wanted to be defined by something in life that he would gladly and honourably die for, and, without wasting another second, his arm reached out and his finger pressed the doorbell – once, twice, as if daring the world to ignore his calling.

He was waiting for the door to be opened when he felt long, elegant fingers barely brushing the pulse at the wrist of the arm that no longer had a hand, and he remembered the prosthesis in the front pocket of his travelling bag, but just as he was kneeling to retrieve it, Brienne caught the sleeve of his sweater and tugged to pull him up.

“No, Jaime,” she said as her hand closed over his stump. “You won't need it and they won't think less of you for not wearing it.” 

Brienne squeezed his forearm and released it, hastily – in time to see a pair of bright blue eyes peeking through the cracked door. In a whirlwind of auburn hair, the door was swung open, practically torn off its hinges, and Sansa Stark threw herself at him from across the threshold, enveloping him in a warm embrace. Over the shoulders of the younger woman, Jaime met Brienne's gaze and, at the sight of her barely repressed smile, he loosened his hold on the bag and let it hit the ground to return the effusive display of affection, though his embrace was rigidly graceless and unadroit – in a manner that made her smile widen and her eyes sparkle. And then Sansa spun around in a swirl of grace and fresh, sweet perfume to throw her arms around Brienne and squeezed tighter and tighter as she stood on the tip of her toes with sisterly tenderness and a ballerina's poise.

“The dragon is tamed,” Sansa whispered. 

“The dragon?” Jamie echoed, flummoxed, as he picked up his bag and followed both women inside. 

“Margaery,” they said in unison and laughed – a mellow, affable sound echoing around them. Sansa opened the door to a closet in the foyer and Jaime placed their bags there as Brienne took off her coat and went on to help him shrug his off. “Tamed,” Sansa continued in hushed tones, “is our code for over her second glass of wine.”

“And why do you call her the dragon?” he found himself asking.

“We don't usually call her that, but this is a special occasion,” the redhead said as they followed her closely behind. Jaime tried to meet Brienne's eyes but she kept her gaze stubbornly fixed on a distant point over her head. It was Sansa who, upon reaching a set of grand, richly decorated doors, halted and turned around to look at him in the eye. “You have to swear, Lannister, not to cross the line of fire. Comprende?” Jaime nodded noncommittally, his attention solely focused on Brienne, who kept staring at the roof as the sound of little, heavy feet scurrying across hardwood floors filtered through to the ground floor. “I'm glad we have an understanding,” she told him with a smile, and he thought it was a funny thing to say because he didn't understand a damn thing.

It didn't take him long to assemble the puzzle, though.

As soon as Sansa opened the doors to the dining room, Margaery, who had been standing before the window, tossed a look over her shoulder and choked on a sip of wine at the sight of him, spitting half of it back into her glass. “Seriously,” she said, after recovering from a coughing fit, “you brought Johnny Bravo here?”

“Oh, really mature,” Jaime said as he ensconced himself in an armchair. “How old are you? Five? Four?”

“Well, that depends,” Marge rebutted, making herself comfortable by the table, across from him. “You'll find my level of maturity to be quite pliant – it adapts to the interlocutor; so maybe three, two years old? Yes,” she said, looking him up and down, “sounds about right, though one couldn't tell by the wrinkles around your eyes.” She tilted her head and smiled at him – a dangerous smile reminding him that Margaery, just like him, had been raised to play games. “Time has not been kind to you, my friend.”

Jaime furrowed his brow and, as he reclined in the armchair with a peremptory smirk sketched on his face, he felt a reassuring hand on his bicep and looked up to find Brienne standing over him; the feeling of inadequacy he had experienced since crossing the front door, obliterated by the familiarity – long neglected and then revived – that he experienced just by having her around, by her unpretentious touch or the mere glimpse of light caressing her crystalline eyes to suffuse them with blue shades that fought to break through the surface as the waves of the tumbling sea struggled to reach the shore and managed, in the midst of a battle, to exude an enigmatically fascinating calm. 

“Cade and Hillie are playing upstairs,” she told him. “I'll have a talk with them and send them down, but it may take a while.”

He took a deep breath and felt his chest expand and constrict with the warm air in the house making its way through his lips, in and out of him – his heart beating erratically underneath. The one good hand that had been resting on his thigh, climbed up his arm to cover her hand. Her fingers went stiff at the contact, but he tightened his grip, turned his face toward her and nuzzled his nose into the crook of her elbow, inhaling the fragrance that was purely Brienne's before loosening his hold and letting her hand go. Across the room, he could hear Margaery gulping the contents of her glass, putting it down on the table and then pouring herself some more. 

Brienne's gaze met his scorching one briefly, reticently – fragments of past longings flickering through her eyes, swimming against a tide of disillusionments – before she looked away and walked out of the room, leaving him bereft of warmth despite the fire crackling in the wood stove. He waited until her steps could be heard no more to draw a cigarette from his pack and just as he was fumbling with the lighter, Jaime heard Sansa gasp and looked up in time to see her eyes firmly planted on his stump. 

“What happened to you, Jaime?” she asked and drew a chair out to seat herself by his side.

“The same it happened to all of us,” he told her as he lit his cigarette and took a few pulls. “We've all lost things in the game of power played by others –”

“Started by your father, you surely mean, and played with a vengeance by your whole family,” Margaery remarked and stood up to reclaim her place by the window. “Oh, and I'm afraid smoking is not allowed here, Lannister.”

Feeling quite belligerent toward the brunette, Jaime drew heavily on his cigarette and blew the smoke at her. “Mature, indeed,” he heard her mutter as she narrowed her eyes and he smirked complacently. 

“You'll find my level of maturity to be quite pliant,” he told her, throwing her words back at her and watching in delectation as her hold on the glass tightened. “My father started the game,” he continued, “you're most assuredly right. Your father, Sansa, failed to play it and died, as did all who didn't know the rules or refused to play it altogether.” He paused to seize the ashtray Sansa was offering and, ignoring his urge, put the cigarette out. “I wouldn't say anyone truly won. I'm not even sure whether the game is even over, but if there's one thing I'm certain of, it's that we've all lost much more than we were willing to wager – my hand being one of those.”

“Among others,” Margaery reminded him, turning her eyes to the door Brienne had exited through barely a moment ago.

“Among others,” he conceded with a nod of his head. 

“Many things were snatched from us – that's true,” Sansa commented, interrupting their banter. “We've lost so much, too much, perhaps, but we've also won. Can't you see it? For every loss, there was a blessing to collect. For every tear, a lesson to learn. For every farewell, the hope that we'd find that person again, that we'd meet them and we'd right all our wrongs, and say everything we didn't dare say before – and that hope was the beacon of tender light that had us rushing through hell when we would have otherwise given up.” She was looking at the burning fire – the flames dancing to the beat of a song found in the transient otherworldliness of her voice that rose and fell with each memory evoked. “There were cruel people who barged in, forced their way into our lives and only left when there was nothing more to sack. For each of those, there was, at least, one that would politely knock at out doors and patiently wait to be let it, and would try again and again, standing outside with an offering of their own – a gaze, a smile, a kind word. Brienne and you,” Sansa continued and lifted her gaze to meet Jaime's, “saved me from Petyr. I didn't even know her and, yet, she came for me. You rescued me from a life of obedience and humiliation, but you weren't the only ones. I learnt that salvation can be subtle, too – that there are people who may not kill the demons, but who will silence them with small gestures. Many of those people left, the cruel ones and the merciful. That's the course of life – people come and go; most of them aren't meant to be in our lives forever, they just pass through. If we're lucky, the good ones come back to us and they make us stronger – not to gain anything from or through us, but because they know that you need strength to be the person you want to become and you need strength to let go of those parts of yourself that don't nurture you, that corrode the good parts. They don't expect anything from us. These people will let us be with skeletons in our closets and ghosts close at our heels. They don't erase the past, but they make the skeletons and the ghosts less painful to look upon and just let us start again, start over, start anew.”

There must have been some wisdom, some truth, in her words, for when he turned around and saw Brienne standing at the bottom of the stairs with Hillie racing down the steps and Cade hiding behind his mother's legs with big blue eyes trained on him and the utmost look of awe in his very face, Jaime felt as if all his skeletons, his demons and ghosts faded to the background, driven by the sheer force of an overture that promised to be beautiful song – a symphony, Jaime thought, a damn hymn risen to a fierce roar.


	8. Explosions

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Hello there, beautiful, beautiful people! I thank you all for the thoughtful comments you've left both for me and this story. I've been through some things that have been very hard on me and, after the storm had passed, I found myself utterly exhausted. Inspiration just wouldn't come and I had to strive to find the words, and not just any words but the right ones, to write this. I just wanted to say that, hopefully, everything I went through has helped me to grow as a person and that, hopefully also, this will show in my writing so that I can offer you more, as you have offered me with your own stories and your kind comments.  
> Having said that, there are two things you'll have to be very careful about when you read this story. First, Jaime's voice will change somewhere in this chapter and you may find him to be a bit out of character. Do not fret, that's supposed to happen. You'll notice when it does. You're clever girls after all. The change will explain itself out throughout the story, don't worry.  
> Second, chapter eight ends in abrupt way and you'll hate me for doing this to you after making you wait for so long. Do not worry. This interruption has been carefully devised, too.  
> I've reached a crossroads: I can give you quantity or I can give you quality and I hope I made a good choice at picking the latter and did a good job at reflecting that decision on my writing.  
> In advance, I won't be able to update for a couple of weeks since I've final exams, but if you're patient, and I hope you are, chapter nine will arrive. I won't give up on this story, so every chapter that the story needs until it reaches its end will come.  
> Now dig in! :)

WARNING: I strongly advise you to read the A/N before reading this chapter.

 

EXPLOSIONS  
Part I

 

A placid fire burned in the wood stove, emanating a soothing warmth and tender glow that seemed to lure its occupants into the contemplative somnolence conjured by an inclement afternoon. Indeed, Brienne could hear the wind howling in the distance and the rain-pelted windows shaking with its force.

Outside, the innocuous raindrops of a gentle drizzle had turned into an unforgiving downpour – the storm raging on and on. Within the house, an altogether different tempest seemed to have come and gone, destroying everything in its path and leaving remnants of people in its wake, nothing more. Indeed, she could perceive a sort of nostalgia in the air, right in front of her, vague and elusive as it was – an aura not present before. Sansa had a vacant expression in her eyes – her lips barely parted and her patchwork modestly resting on her lap. Margaery, on the other hand, stood by the window, staring out of it, with her fingers tracing the rim of her now empty glass – her face turned skyward, as if the vast expanse of firmament was crying out confessions with each roll of thunder that ripped through the night. And in the midst of this inner storm with no rattling thunder, no fierce winds or blinding lightning, there was Jaime, ensconced in the same armchair she had previously seen him resting on, with his head lowered, his arms folded across his chest and his shoulders slumped forward. He looked like a little kid, so utterly lost, caught between Margaery, the woman clinging to her unforgiving bitterness, and Sansa, the one desirous to loosen her grip on it and just let it go.

Brienne could feel Cadogan's arms encircling her from behind, his cheek pressed against her hips and his tiny fingers digging into the skin under her jeans as the man in question turned his face toward them. Then, as his gaze settled on Cade, Brienne caught a glimpse of unfettering never evinced before – a youthful, unsullied nudity, stripped of trepidation or aplomb as if he had never witnessed the harsh ways of the world, as if every unforgiving instant spent within the torturous chambers of his soul had abated and shrivelled, condemned to oblivion by a sudden, momentous epiphany. Cadogan himself seemed spellbound by his verdant depths, compelled to hold his gaze, and, as their souls called out to each other in silent notes that painted the room iridescent gold, something shifted again. A placid urgency, the fruit of their own timid curiosity, embraced the room with tender arms, wrapping man and child in a precious, delicate cocoon, beyond which everything blurred, lost its edge and became profound softness – father and son falling, falling, falling; forever lost in a gravity that seemed to defy all laws and pull them closer and still closer.

They looked at each other as if the space between them, an abyss of absence, had been suddenly bridged by the mere meeting of their eyes, as if every breath they drew could asphyxiate the estrangement born from years spent apart, as if barriers of flesh had melted away and the parts which hadn't melted had simply collapsed like shards of frozen glass and they were finally face to face with the very fragile tissue of life, had reached its nucleus – sizzlingly hot and blindingly bright.

From her place, posted by Cadogan's side, Brienne saw Jaime reach out and flex the muscles of his arm, as if he had forgot about his severed hand and was in a moment bigger than him, bigger than time or space, bigger than life itself, about to beckon his son forward. There was earnest zeal in the lines of his face and eagerness to believe it in Cade's disposition until the amputated limb caught the latter's attention, and the child's body stiffened beside Brienne and his arms tightened around her legs. In an instant, the sparkle in Jaime's gaze died but his walls, the ones he had spent a lifetime building, stayed down. The older man closed his eyes, sighed and shook his head, but the arm stood where he had left it, stretched before him. It reminded her of the Jaime who had once confessed the truth behind the story of Aerys. Its sight conjured the image of a Jaime who had once told her he loved her. Her! Her of all people, Brienne – the one who had been condemned and misjudged because of her aspect, humiliated and shamed because of feeling with a woman's heart, of yearning with a woman's flesh, of speaking with a woman's mouth when she had been judged and found lacking as a woman herself. She could almost see him, her Jaime, the very man who had placed his life in her hands and let Brienne lead him to his death as he joined her in a fool's errand, knowing that he was breaching the distance to the unequivocal end, had seen it in her eyes, felt it in his chest.

Brienne hadn't even flinched at her first sighting of his cauterised skin, but she had witnessed calamities that Cade had yet to find existed. She had known the face of grotesquerie from an early age, had traced its contours with trembling fingers as the girl in the mirror stared back at her. She had seen it in the cruel ways of men who would betray their own blood and kin for power, would reject, scorn and degrade a good woman's love to spare their name and pride, would kill, slaughter and destroy just because they could, for the thrill, the game, the hunt.

She had been young and foolish once and had ventured out into the world to realise that souls had a price and could and were sold and that, in a whim, the turn of fate or a strike of luck, fealty could be won and lost, treaties could be broken and alliances, forgot.  
Brienne knew the world, had held it in her hands when it seemed like she would burst from happiness, had cradled it against her bosom as everything around her fell to pieces, had clawed at its ankles as it moved faster than she could, almost too fast for her to catch up.

She was older and wiser now, and although there was much to learn yet and she could be faulted for making far too many mistakes, Brienne had had her taste of experience. She had lived her life thoroughly, filled with intense emotion and deep thought; every moment, she had walked along the edge of where honour meets opprobrium and had managed to retain her principles, a grace that went beyond that which was visible or tangible. She had the weight of years on her shoulders. Cadogan, however, was still a child – a child who carried the torch of innocence she, herself, had lit when younger, a child dressed in the beauty of his father, a child who had lived with all of the world's devils held at bay by her love.

She had never dreamt of having kids, had dismissed the idea as easily as it had come – a consequence of seeing herself through everybody else's eyes: ungainly, unsightly, dismal. For her appearance, she had inspired commiseration; for the calibre of her capacity as a police officer, resentment. And she had learnt to live with both until Jaime came along and suddenly, her appearance was not a source of pity but a fact, and her superiority in the field earned her his respect and made her his equal. Slowly but steadily all the traits that had made her doubt herself throughout the years were the very things that, to him, made her unique. She could see it in the way his lips turned at the corners whenever she crossed his mind, see it in the skin around his eyes as it crinkled and in his emeralds as they glinted with promise, and tenderness, and so much love; she could see it in his stance whenever a case was assigned to them, as if he could protect her against the world when it was him, Brienne would find much later, she needed protection from. He had loved her most profoundly, she knew. It had scared her sometimes – the depth of his love, the intensity, the unconditionality, that lack of boundaries that was all-encompassing. He had loved her and when she had allowed herself to love him back, he had gone and destroyed the chore behind a fortress he had initially clawed at and she had finally let him pulverise.

 

LONDON, TWELVE YEARS BEFORE

The night seemed immeasurably vaster without him by her side, the traffic noise blending in with the ticking of the clock behind the glass and filling her room with a sense of time slipping between her fingers – time lost in his absence.

Brienne had never bothered with perfume but since Jaime had come into her life, she lived high on the scent that he left behind – in her bed, on her sheets, under her tongue, on her skin, in her blood. That night, however, his scent was another reminder of the growing distance between them. She had felt it before – the cold silence, the blank stares, a touch that meant nothing. The words he would whisper in the dead of night, at the crack of dawn, when sleep eluded them both, sounded true; but she had felt it and she knew he felt it, too. There had been something else in his embraces, something alien, something bitter, something that tasted like ruth. But he wasn't there and she had never felt colder than she did right then.

Her phone lay silent by the bed. They had fought before and she knew he wouldn't call. Lately, they had spent the nights at her place and her bedroom had turned into a battlefield. In every word she had said, every word she had hushed, Jaime had found a reason to fight and, that night, he had picked a quarrel over Ned Stark – a man Brienne had never met, but heard of from his wife. In a series of arguments, that, of all topics, had been the straw that broke the camel's back. Jaime had left, slammed the door without a second glance.

Brienne turned over and looked down at the phone lying on the floor. She knew he wouldn't call. She knew he needed to cool off but there had been such finality in their last discussion, that Brienne felt that wasn't like the ones before. She knew that the moment had arrived: one of them had to be strong or let go.

In a moment of spontaneity, she picked up her coat and threw it over her pyjamas. Without a second thought, she grabbed her keys from the kitchen's counter-top and stepped out of her building, hailing a taxi as she set foot on the sidewalk. She mumbled out his address and watched the city blur by as the vehicle sped down the streets. Somehow, for the first time in her life, she hadn't planned what was about to happen. Brienne didn't know what she'd do once she reached his place, but she realised that it didn't matter. One of them had to put the gun down and she knew that the time had come for her to be the strength he didn't have. This was her test. That moment, right then, was her chance to prove to herself that if Jaime faltered, she could be strong enough for both of them.

She closed her eyes and rested the palm of her hand on her stomach. There was no indication of the life growing inside of her yet and although she had never imagined herself as a mother, Brienne felt the drive to fight for it – for her or him, or them –, fight for the part of Jaime that had taken root in her belly, that part of him that was drawing away from her, away from them.

As the taxi reached its destination, Brienne muttered a prayer. It had been a long time since she last prayed but, unbeknownst to her, she felt the silent words leaving her parted lips in a puff of breath. She had always used the tube, but that night she had chosen to take a taxi instead – something urgent in the passing of time, in the moon and stars. Soon, the taxi drew up before his house and, throwing some bills onto the driver's lap, she hastily climbed out.

Brienne made her way towards his place; she stood on his front step, rang twice and drew back. Minutes ticked by while she stood there, waiting for the door to open, for Jaime to appear, waited to kiss his lips and hold him close to her, tell him that she loved him, that she didn't want to fight, that they could talk things out, mend what was broken, make it last. Finally, she heard him fumbling for his keys, walking down the corridor, stumbling twice and cursing each time until he reached the front door and turned the lock and threw the door open as she held her breath. And there he stood, a fallen god. And she loved him, loved him with every fibre of her being, loved him for the person he had been and the person he could become and loved him, loved him, loved him so damn much.

“What are you doing here?”

I couldn't let you go. This can't be the end, not after everything we went through. We can't end like this. I love you. “You know,” she settled for and took a step toward him, but saw him hastily draw back.

“No,” he said, and she didn't know whether he was talking to her or himself, felt that, for the first time, she didn't understand him at all, and Brienne realised that she couldn't fathom how to reach for this lukewarm Jaime standing before her. His fire had burned itself out. There was no ardour in him, no zeal, no passion – just cold apathy. She wished he'd kiss her or curse her, as he had once urged her to do; wanted him to do anything but stand there with that indolent curve to his lips, that dead look in his eyes – wanted him to shout, to scream, to raise his hand and come at her with everything that he had, anything but that harrowing stoicism, that onerous inertia. But he didn't and she knew then that they were coming down. “No,” he reiterated.

“Why?” It was all she could manage to ask. After all that time, Brienne realised she deserved answers but she couldn't seem to formulate the questions. “Why,” was all she managed to say. “Why, Jaime, why?”

“Because you suffocate me with your probity and goodness and that blasted judgement – always looking at me as if I could be better, asking more, more of me until I feel there's nothing left to give; demanding, always demanding. You don't want me, Brienne. Can't you see it? You don't want the great Jaime Lannister – the man that killed Aerys, the man that pushed a child off a tower, a man so enamoured with himself that he fucked his twin sister, fucked her because he could and he wanted to,” he said as he slumped against the wall of the corridor, half-hidden by the darkness there, half-unveiled by the light coming from the street lamps. “Why? Because I need space and I'm a motherfucker who will do as he pleases and won't dwell on how it's going to make you feel.”

“You're none of those things, Jaime,” she found herself saying. “The great Jaime Lannister is how the rest of the world sees you. The great Jaime Lannister is a sham devised to make some men sleep easier at night. You know and I know now that you did what you had to do to save innocent people, that you pushed an innocent child out of the window in order to save the woman you loved from Robert and your father and the rest of them all, and that you loved said woman because she made you feel as if you were a part of her world, as opposed to this world around you that had you feeling as if you would never belong.”

“Don't fool yourself, wench,” he told her – a supercilious smirk marring the allure of his beauty, turning all tenderness into contempt as he aimed to pierce, and hurt and then twist the strands of her pain and pull at its threads until the pain became unbearable. “I am that man, I always was. You just chose to disregard it, to see beyond him into something he could never become.”

“I never wanted anything other than you, just as you are – all of it; but I cannot help being who I am anymore than you can. I never asked you to change, never expected it of you. You must, Jaime, you have to understand that.”

Her words had barely been uttered - a thread of silver spilling from her mouth: bright, fluid, mild, and true – when, all of a sudden, Brienne heard a blow, and another blow, punctuated by one more. Jaime had spun around in a perfect arch of grace and ire, and hit the corridor's wall. He crashed his fist against the vertical surface three times – hit, hit, hit – and then, he spread his fingers there and lay his forehead on the back of his hands.

“I don't love you anymore, is that what you want me to say?”

“If it's the truth...,” she whispered, feeling a sudden chill that had her wrapping her coat tighter around herself, “I only want the truth, Jaime. I deserve it, I think, after everything we went through.”

Jaime tipped his head over his stretched arm, lightly resting his chin on his shoulder, and turned his gaze toward her. This, she thought, this right here is his breaking point – a single grain of sand and the castle will come tumbling down. She could see it in his eyes – the emotional detachment on his behalf, the indifference towards her feelings and, in the midst of that frigidity, a contradictory urge to harm. Brienne, however, could handle the last one. That was the Jaime she knew, the Jaime she coveted and loved. What made her feel as if she was treading into unknown territory – thin ice that could snap if too much pressure was applied on the wrong side, a threatening land, the very extreme that Jaime could reach, the worst he could become – was the gelidity evinced in his verdant eyes. She knew that hell could burn, melt and destroy; but hell could also be ice cold and she realised then that, with a touch of its iciness, Jaime was about to deal the fatal blow.

“The truth,” Jaime repeated. “It's the truth you want. Well,” he continued, “the truth is that you don't make me feel the way you used to. The truth, Brienne, is that I don't feel like myself when I'm around you and I tried so hard to hold onto you, but I cannot lie to myself anymore. I just can't measure up to the ideals you have of what, of who I can become. I can be the bad you know that it's the me I recognise, but I can't be the good you wish I could ripen into. In the beginning, I thrived on it – your innocence that seemed to wash away the dried blood on my hands, the promise that I could use my hands to shape a new future for you and me, for the both of us –, I craved it; in my waking hours, I dreamt of that. On nights blinded by a veil of sleep, I could almost touch this. I could feel the line between reality and fantasy blurring and, during those nights, behind closed lids, I dared to live that dream, to experience it with every fibre of my very being, travel the realm of possibilities and grow into the man you saw when you looked at me. When we made love, when I came in you and made you come and lay with you in the aftermath, I would convince myself that I was the person you saw me as and I became that golden-haired fool who was desirous of acceptance, someone who deserved to love and be loved.”

His crude words were not intended to make her cringe as she would have done in the past, not this time, and Brienne could see his honesty and grief. She could see that Jaime was finally allowing himself to come clean, to say what he truly felt without any fear of himself, without any inhibitions or guilt. Silence was a gun he had carried around for days, weeks now; but he shot it that night and, once it went off, he couldn't stop shooting it, and the explosions were beautiful, and deafening, and painful to look at.

“You opened a door – you did it cautiously and gently, curious almost, certain I would reject the gesture – you opened a door and let me into your world, and what a world that was! You – ascetic, unapproachable, immemorable you – you opened that door and left it open for me to see this other side of you, a field of beautiful Brienne; and my soul – tainted black by a past filled with profligacy, and turpitude, and cruelty – was unravelled and entangled and I became your sheet music, for you to erase the discordant notes, write new ones over those and compose a musical piece with crystalline fingertips. You, silly girl, with the universe in your eyes and spring upon your lips, you made me feel at peace. But that placidity was a lie. Can't you see it?”

He left the question hanging in the air while his eyes looked at the night sky above them and, then, he looked right at her, and what she saw on his face scared Brienne. While his words were charged with emotion and raw, brutal honesty, his expression betrayed nothing. It could have been the face of any man – the face of a man passing her by on the street, a man sitting by her side on the bus or someone whom she could share an elevator ride with -, any man but Jaime. She looked for signs of him, but none could she find; only his words that dripped from his lips and spiralled between them and fell in transparent rivulets at her feet, running away and scattering until there was no trace of them. Brienne realised she needed something to remind her of the man she loved because she loved him still and desperately, restlessly, almost imploringly searched for reasons to hold onto that love and, just as she thought she had found it, when he raised his arm and caressed her cheek and the line of her jaw down to her chin with gentle fingers, he scowled and his hand retreated.

“I let you tame the lion in me. You approached me with tender innocence in your heart and determination in your gait, courage and conviction in your every step. At first, I thought the world would devour you, eat you up and spit you out, that it was a matter of time before you cracked and then life would filter in through those cracks and erode you from the inside and shatter your hideous carcass, turning you to dust, to ashes and blood. The lion then opened its mouth and roared, menacing and loud, but you didn't flinch, didn't falter or retreat. You stood stoically before the animal, and the creature, thrown out of kilter by your deterrence and self-possession, followed you with his gaze. He continued to roar but he did it while lying down on its paws, surveying the enemy, hypnotised by it. And the enemy was beautiful – not at first sight, no; her beauty was subtle, present but not evident, latent. The tamer was neither artless nor artful – she was genuine, a rare quality, but she had it. She had experienced profound anguish, had walked through the pit of fire and battled fallen angels, she knew struggle, and loss and rejection and, yet, she broke through the surface to breathe in an air that would be exhaled in flowers, in sweet scents and colours, and that made her the most beautiful human being his eyes have ever beheld. Spellbound, the lion let the enemy cross the line and found true gentleness in her – closer and closer he let her come and she, tender and noble, came. And then it was too late, the lion had been tamed and what is a lion if not fierce? Nothing, Brienne. I let you take the roar away from me, I let you tame my voice and now, because of you, because I let you, I am nothing.”

“Everything you did, Jaime, – everything you held onto and let go of – every single thing was your choice,” Brienne replied and, after a moment of hesitation, went on to add, “And what about me? I changed, too. You changed me in so many ways, but I'd never dare say that you took anything from me, for what you received was given willingly – things I'll never recover, things I could never regret losing. I also left parts of myself behind. We changed, Jaime, we both changed; we seasoned, we grew up. You took me through a labyrinth with no way out, you showed me the world as seen through your eyes and you... you turned my life upside down, and even if I could find the path that would take me back to the start, I wouldn't take it, I don't want to because, along the way, I had you and you turned my life into a song, a wonderful song, just because you were in the world, just because you were in my world.”

Jaime's gaze was fixed on Brienne, as if he were undressing her soul, as if he could see beyond her words and what he saw was much, much more than what she would allow herself to disclose. He was staring at the very chore of who Brienne really was and she was the sun and he was the planet orbiting around it. He realised then that he wasn't in her world, he was her world. Jaime fixed his gaze on her and she held it without fear or remorse, met it with a meaningful one of her own, while the moon looked on them both – distant and cold.

“I still remember the day I met you,” Brienne continued, unfazed by the intensity of his gaze. “We were green like the leaves of a tree in the summertime, but thought ourselves to be so experienced and wise, thought we could take on anything and had all the answers engraved on the palm of our hands. We were so different, you and I... we still are; but if there's something we have in common, the only thing perhaps, that is devotion. You're devoted to your emotions and I'm devoted to my honour, and those very attributes have made you an honourable man and me, a woman unprecedentedly loved, a woman that found a deep well of love in herself she didn't know existed and loved, still loves, will probably forever love the honourable man dishonoured by the whole of mankind.”

“If space is what you need, then the world is yours for the taking. Go out there, sail those seas of yourself to find what Jaime Lannister truly means, roam the land of possibilities, do your soul-searching, reach the edge of who you can be and come back to me. If you need to find yourself, go and do it. I'll be here waiting for you to return and whatever version of you surfaces, I'll learn to love it just as you once learnt to love me. But if you choose to stay in this, we can explore that endless string of possibilities together.”

“And, Jaime, know this, know that I won't be the one to walk away, that I won't leave so easily, that I'll stick by your side. I'll be haunting your mind, lingering in the quiet corners of your body, seeping into your soul to the depths of your heart. Look at me, Jaime, I'm giving you all that I am, right here, right now. I'm fighting for us, but I need you to do it with me, strive to save this, whatever is left of it. Fight for us because, along the way, I meant something to you and I need you to remember that, to remember, remember with your heart, that we both mean too much, that we've come so far from those two fools who thought they had the world figured out, that, during those times we were together, you were loved. But don't run away, don't turn from this. I'm not giving up on us and I won't let you escape as if we're not worth the fight. I won't let you say that you are nothing and I won't let you turn away from me as if I mean nothing to you, as if –”

Suddenly, the headlights of a passing car briefly illuminated the mirror hung on the wall opposite the one that Jaime was leaning on, and, out of the corner of her eye, Brienne caught the reflection of long, golden hair framing a feminine face, tumbling down in waves that brushed full breasts covered by a male shirt, one she was certain belonged to Jaime, had seen him wear before, and, just like that, she broke mid-speech, losing her train of thought to the woman standing at the other end of the corridor.

Brienne took a step aside, casting a glance over Jaime's shoulder just to see Cersei perched behind him – a feral glint in her eyes and malice in the curve of her smile adding to the overall air of hauteur and contempt on her countenance. Her chest was heaving under the cleavage displayed by a generous amount of undone buttons, her breasts barely restrained by bra cups of burgundy satin. Her arms were crossed before her – the sleeves of his shirt, rolled up to her elbows – and the fingers of her right hand were tapping an inaudible rhythm on the flesh of her left bicep as if she was bored, as if she already knew the only possible outcome and was merely waiting for it to unfold, for Brienne to turn around and go, walk out of Jaime's life once and for all.

“It's a shame we had to wait this long to finally be introduced,” Cersei said – her voice deceivingly affable. “I've yearned to meet you but Jaime, here, always refused to do the honours.”


End file.
